


Go Fuck Yourself

by words4nerdz



Category: Mortal Kombat (Video Games), Mortal Kombat - All Media Types
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Dubious Consent, F/M, Gen, Hate Sex, body swapping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:51:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4008286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/words4nerdz/pseuds/words4nerdz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prior to the events of Deadly Alliance. Shang Tsung and Quan Chi want to sabotage the portal tech at Special Forces HQ to prevent Earthrealm interference, but to do that, they need insider access with high-level security clearance. They know that Sonya and Jax are incorruptible, so they recruit the most amoral piece of shit they know that has a history with Special Forces--the Black Dragon, Kano. Getting into the base is the easy part--after that, it gets tricky. To expedite things, the sorcerers give Kano a body swap spell. You know where this is going. Cursing, violence, body dysphoria, and eventual hate sex. Alternating perspectives of Kano and Sonya.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wheels in Motion

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't going to be a love story, so please don't go into it expecting a romance to develop. Please let me know if there are any distracting errors, or if there are particular scenes or dialogue paths that you'd like to see explored. Hope you like it--critique is always appreciated!

He hated Netherrealm. Hated the fetid stench that rose from black fissures in the ashy earth, the moist steam that curled around your ankles and pressed clammily against any exposed skin, and the distant screaming, always screaming. The peripheral regions didn’t have the crippling heat of the inner areas, though, that perpetual shimmering of air from the lakes and rivers of lava. The molten metal and minerals blazed reds and golds so bright that they burned themselves into your retinas, and every time you closed your eyes for a week afterward, you’d see their inversions in purple and green. Random pits of fire, bloodthirsty Oni, slinking demons — it wasn’t exactly a decent kind of place. Fortunately, Kano wasn’t exactly a decent kind of man. He hated Netherrealm, but he could deal with it.

He sniffed, thumbing his nose, and sauntered a few feet from the portal that had brought him from Outworld. Just because he couldn’t see or hear anyone didn’t mean he wasn’t being watched. Best to look like he knew what he was doing — forestall any unwanted contact. Not that he was afraid of a fight, he just preferred one that had a material profit beyond the simplicity of your average life-or-death scrapping against hellspawn. He usually got one, too — the benefits of always choosing the winning side. When Shang Tsung and Quan Chi had showed up in Shao Kahn’s court, the last thing he had expected was to see the powerful and mercurial tyrant that had been signing his proverbial paychecks for the last few years get taken out. The wheel of power was always in motion, though — times changed, and if you didn’t change with them, you were liable to get crushed. No point in sentimental loyalty when there was a profit to be made. So the sorcerers had taken the throne, and he’d thrown his lot in with them.

He’d known they’d come from Netherrealm, but he’d hoped to avoid going there. They’d come to Outworld, afterall, it just seemed more efficient to conduct business there instead of portal-hopping around like crazed interdimensional fucking jackrabbits. Instead, he’d been instructed to jump to the arse-end of reality and wait for his new employers to give him his next job. It probably wouldn’t be as cushy as commanding Kahn’s armies, but to tell the truth, he’d missed getting his hands dirty.

Kano swung his arms idly, glancing around the foggy hellscape. Shapes flitted in and out of the shifting clouds of steam — dark shades that defied identification and whispered things that were no doubt very horrible and terrifying, but were just below his threshold of hearing. He wasn’t too worried about them. Things that whispered were usually too scared or too weak to take anything else on in a fair fight, and he had no intention of yielding any advantage he held here, where the mist was relatively thin and the ground comparatively compact and level. He drew a butterfly knife from the sheath strapped to his boot, and played with it — both to occupy himself and to show any potential watchers that he wouldn’t be easy pickings. The silver blade spun in a flashing disc as he tossed it, glinting with what little ambient light there was to be had in this pisshole of a realm. He snatched it from the air with ease, fingers finding the worn leather-wrapped hilt with the casual fluidity of practice. 

He sighed, balancing the knife on the pad of his forefinger by the tip of its blade. For the soon-to-be-conquerors of the known realms, the sorcerers didn’t seem to set much stock by punctuality. If this job wasn’t worth his time, he might be better served by catching the next portal to Earthrealm and letting that god of blunder know that the balance of power had shifted in Outworld. Good didn’t pay much, but it’d put him back with the Black Dragon and give him a chance to actually enjoy all the gold he’d earned from his time in Kahn’s employ.

Light flashed on the flat of his blade, throwing watery reflections against his face and bared chest. The portal was active — someone was coming through. He flipped the knife up in a slow revolution and snagged the hilt, dropping into a ready stance in case of an unexpected visitor. There was always the chance that one or the other of the sorcerers had sent him here just to take care of him quietly, although he didn’t see much distinction between dying here and dying in Outworld. Neither would happen today, though, he was damn sure of that.

The portal fluxed, brilliant white, blue, purple energies pulsing and coursing from the blinding center. A black pinprick appeared there, swelling rapidly into a silhouette, gaining contours and depth until shadow receded entirely and the black-haired Shang Tsung stood before him. The heavy red robes he wore rippled softly in a nonexistent breeze, the milky white eyes never leaving Kano’s brown one. His hands were tucked inside his sleeves and his thin lips were curled in a slight smile. 

“Sorceror.” Kano inclined his head in the barest show of deference. “I expected it to be Quan Chi.”

“Quan Chi is otherwise occupied,” said Tsung, stepping away from the portal and glancing disdainfully around him. “You will receive your instruction from me, and will collect your payment from me upon the completion of your task.”

“I usually get paid up front.” Kano folded his arms, back arched to exaggerate his musculature. “Why should I wait?”

Tsung’s brows furrowed. “It is not your place to question. Rest assured that our arrangement provides the most security for your gold.” 

“What’s the job, then?”

Tsung spread his arms, long fingers contorting as he summoned wreaths of green smoke that coalesced into a miniature replica of the portal, but instead of edges that streaming traces of light off in ragged, dissipating trails, it was enclosed in a neat, artificial ring. The ring itself looked to be composed of artificial materials -- there were suggestions of plating, wiring, twining cables and glowing bars that must have represented LEDs. 

“Earthrealm has achieved teleportation technology — not through any true advancement of their own, but due to an interdimensional-harmonic stone, attuned to the different frequencies of the realms of reality.” He made an arcane gesture, fingers curling at impossible angles, and the ringed portal condensed into a potato-shaped figure with suggestions of porousness. “It should look like this.” 

“You want me to nick a reality-altering rock?” He’d had weirder jobs. None came to mind immediately, but he was sure that he must have.

Tsung shook his head and clenched his fist. The green potato thing blew apart, wisps of energy breaking dramatically against the figures of the two men. “I want you to destroy it.”

“Where is it kept?” He didn’t bother asking why. If Earthrealm couldn’t use the portal, they couldn’t get to Outworld or Netherrealm or anywhere else. They probably wouldn’t even be able to communicate with other realms — destroying the portal’s power source or whatever would effectively prevent any Earthrealm interference in Shang Tsung and Quan Chi’s plans. 

“The primary headquarters of Special Forces Outer World Investigation Agency.” 

He grinned. It’d been a while since he’d tangled with Special Forces. He wondered if his old rival, Sonya Blade, was still alive. He hoped so -- it'd be a crying shame if she weren't there to be humiliated when he pulled this job off in the center of her home. He'd have to rub her nose in it a little before leaving. Maybe so hard that her skull cracked. Teach her a lesson for their last encounter. 

Shang Tsung smiled. "We thought you'd appreciate the assignment. We can open a portal that will deposit you within the perimeter of their main compound, but you'll need to make your way inside." 

"Not a problem," he said, busy with thoughts of his past run-ins with Blade and other Special Forces mooks. "Any idea where I'll find the portal stone thing?"

The sorcerer stroked his beard, the beads at the ends of his mustachios clicking. “If we knew the precise location, we could open a portal there and simply destroy the stone ourselves. Or we could ensorcel a weak-minded mortal stationed on-base and command them to do so. It will likely be in the main building — it should be aboveground, and it will most definitely be under heavy guard.” 

“Not to question your judgment, but Special Forces and I are old friends. My face isn’t exactly low-profile, and you’re asking me to infiltrate the heart of the organization that has made it their goal to prevent shit like this from happening.” Kano spread his hands in an exaggeratedly helpless gesture. “If you can’t even tell me where I need to go, how am I expected to get through an entire base of hostiles and unknown technological defenses? What guarantees do I have that you’ll get me out of there?”

The lines in the sorcerer’s face deepened, and his unnaturally white eyes seemed to glow. “You gave us the impression that your skills were up to the task. If you have doubts in your capabilities—”

“I’m capable, alright,” snarled Kano. “You can bet your arse, I’m capable. I just think I’m a mite too valuable to your operation for you to sling me into a shitstorm with no way out.” 

Shang Tsung spread his arms wide and his robes flared with a pulse of green energy that pushed Kano back a few steps. In a flash, he had his knives out and was tensed, prepared to spring and slaughter. The sorcerer didn’t press the attack, though his lip curled in disdain.

“I would wither your insolent tongue in your mouth, tear it free, and crush it into dust in my hand if I had my way, but for the moment you are correct. Your weapons connections in Earthrealm may prove vital to the plan, and we would not jeopardize that even for the portal stone. You will not be entering the base unprotected, however.” He produced a scrap of parchment from one of his voluminous sleeves and gestured over it. A green symbol flared and faded just as quickly. He held it out to Kano. “It is a spell that will allow you to transfer your consciousness into the vessel of another of your choosing.”

He took it grudgingly, eyeing the fragile paper with skepticism. “How do I activate it?” 

“Blood.” The sorcerer’s tone made it abundantly clear that it should have been obvious. “Either yours or that of your target. Simply apply a sample of blood to the parchment, and it will begin to consume itself — as it dissolves, focus on your chosen vessel. If your will is strong, your consciousness will leave your body and embed itself within the body of the other.”

“How do I get back?” He wasn’t so sure about this spell. He liked his body, he knew his body — he’d spent his whole life getting to know its limits and capabilities, honing its abilities to optimal performance. Hell, he even liked his cybernetic upgrade — that eye laser came in handy in a pinch, and it was damned intimidating. He’d do anything for enough coin, but it would take a hell of a lot of cash to get him to abandon his oldest and most reliable companion.

“The spell will expire four days after its invocation, but if your desire to return to your body is strong enough, you may be able to end it before that time. In terms of your actual extraction, I will be scrying to monitor your progress, and will be able to locate your soul when you have completed your mission — I will open a portal at your precise location and draw you through to Outworld.”

“Easy as that?”

“Yes. Easy as that.”

Kano considered. With the mind transfer spell, it seemed like an almost absurdly simple job — he could just walk up to the nearest OIA grunt, smack ‘em around a little, allow himself to be detained on-site, bleed a bit, and bang! He’d be walking around in a body that had easy access to the teleporter. Four days? He could do it in two.

“It’s a deal,” he declared, tucking the spell into his boot. He grinned, extending a hand out to Shang Tsung. An obligatory gesture that the nigh-immortal sorcerer probably wouldn’t observe, but he was in a good enough mood to offer it anyway. “When do I start?”

To his surprise, Shang Tsung smiled and took his hand, clasping the other man’s forearm firmly. 

“Now,” he said, and pivoted, throwing Kano over his hip with supernatural strength, flinging the merc through the portal and into the blinding light. 


	2. Reunion

Sonya’s world was still, quiet, simple. She breathed, feeling the warm strain in her calves as she shifted the bulk of her weight from the left foot to the right. She felt a bead of sweat trickle down her forehead and gather on her brow, the negligible weight increasing until it exceeded whatever fragile balance it was permitted between volume, surface tension, and cohesion, and it fell, splattering itself as another dark stain on her shirt. She drew her left leg up and in tight to her chest, pivoting and snapping out in a vicious kick that hit the weighted bag with a crisp slap. Its chain clinked as it swung back with the force of her blow, but she didn’t allow it a peaceful retreat — following through with the momentum of her kick, she spun and sank the back of her elbow into the old bag’s side, then turned into it and launched a barrage of short uppercuts and hooks. She increased the speed of her punches until the smacks of gauze-wrapped flesh on old leather sounded like rainfall. Air moved in through her nose and out through her mouth steadily, sounding tinny in the sparse quarters of the sparring room.

No one but her and the bag, nothing but her skills and the target. Clear. 

The bag began to swing back towards her, and she seized it in both hands, pulling it in as she brought her knee up, driving it into the bag with a grunt. She pushed the bag away and danced back a few paces, noting the time it took for the pockmark to fill out again. More sweat — trickling over her lips. She licked it away, enjoying the salty taste. Sweat was composed of salt, water, and urea. Uncomplicated. 

She checked her wraps before moving in again — still secure. The padding across her knuckles hadn’t slipped, so it should be good for another half-hour at least. Sonya tossed her head, flicking her ponytail back over her shoulders, and bobbed up on the balls of her feet, swaying up and back before launching herself back to the bag, letting her cocked arm lag to gather force so that when her feet touched down, her fist slammed heavily into the leather. It swung back, putting itself at the perfect distance for a roundhouse kick. Sonya whipped herself into it without hesitation, hitting the floor and rolling away. Her shoulder stung and her shins were throbbing, but _damn_ did those ever feel good. Something about the full-body rotation. 

Sonya put a palm to her throat, lightly resting thumb and forefinger against the arteries to monitor her pulse while she counted. Fourteen beats in ten seconds is eighty-four beats per minute — not bad. Tomorrow was endurance cardio in her exercise regimen, and with an average resting heart rate of sixty-two beats per minute, she was having to ramp up the intensity of her strength training in order to bring her active heart rate up to a level that promised growth. It’d be easier if she had a sparring partner — in terms of improvement, at least. When she was going up against another person, though, her competitive side tended to take over and she’d never been good at pulling punches. At least you didn’t have to apologize to equipment and file an incident report when you broke it.

She shook her head and took a deep breath, tightening her ponytail briskly. It’s training time — stay in the present, stay in the room. The bag had stilled itself, so she squared up to it, running through a series of strikes and punches in slow motion, focusing on the perfect execution of each movement. Ensuring that she landed each hit with the correct contact, keeping her arm straight behind direct blows, adjusting for the shock of impact that would accompany any move with force behind it was essential. After each practice blow, she checked her posture — correcting her feet or shoulders as needed. 

Once she’d gotten a few repetitions down to her satisfaction, she increased her speed and poured a little more strength into every move until she settled into a vicious rhythm at full power, a visceral cadence kept by the beat of her heart. Her arms were humming with heat and the edge of fatigue, and a slick sheen of sweat coated every inch of exposed skin. Her breath was coming faster now — staccato huffs that scraped in her throat. She could feel strands of hair sticking to the back of her neck, and the padding over her knuckles was slipping earlier than she had expected. The gauze abraded her skin, wearing it a little with every strike. In about ten minutes, the skin over her knuckles would start tearing.

She grinned. 

As much as she disdained people who pushed themselves to injury in their exercise, there was something deeply satisfying about knowing you left traces of yourself on the training-room floor, about slowly pulling tacky gauze fiber from the tender flesh of your aching hands after a good workout, and washing away all the pain and frustration down the shower drain with a little bit of blood. She’d always been a fast healer, and the shallow nicks sustained during training never lasted very long. A couple days at most — then it was either good as new or thickened, hardier scar tissue. 

Sonya slowed her assault on the punching bag, glancing toward the boxing stage in the back of the gym. The bag was great for practicing technical aspects of combat, but it lacked the proportions and mobility of an actual opponent. Sometimes she could talk Jax into sparring with her for a few rounds, but OIA had fallen under the shadow of corporate short-sightedness, and these days he spent most of his time defending the expense of manning and maintaining the many facilities OIA had fallen under the shadow of corporate short-sightedness, and these days he spent most of his days defending the expense of manning and maintaining the many facilities OIA had founded around the globe, not to mention the exorbitant energy costs associated with each use of the teleporter. They had people in the Special Force’s R&D department working on optimizing the draw from portal stone — if they were able to focus its power, to channel it efficiently, they wouldn’t even need an external source of energy.

Jax was intelligent, morally upstanding, and had an unwavering dedication to the cause. These were not traits shared by the budget review committee he was forced to negotiate with, and the contrast between them was mutually unsatisfying. The discussion had been protracted beyond the estimated period, and it was taking its toll on her friend. Briggs hadn’t been training, and she rarely saw him outside of mealtimes — he didn’t talk much at dinner anymore, because at that point he was so drained that it was all he could do to ferry the food from his plate to his mouth. She hoped that the review was concluded soon, although from what he’d been able to share with her, the verdict would not be a favorable one.

She sighed, using the collar of her shirt to mop the sweat from her brow. It wasn’t her fight. She didn’t have any power or say in the fate of the division that she’d devoted so much of her life to, and while that may have pissed her off, in a way she was grateful that she wouldn’t be able to blame herself if the OIA was shut down. She’d probably be transferred to another division, although anything would be a letdown in comparison to the awesome, terrible, and downright weird shit she’d seen in the past decade. Going back to fighting over things as supposedly important as the invisible lines that dictated country borders, the exchange of nonlethal narcotics and material goods, even preventing chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons of mass destruction from wiping out cities would pale in comparison to the unsung glory of battling for the very existence of their entire species. She hoped Jax would succeed in showing the committee the very real necessity of their division. Maybe it’d help if they fired up the teleporter and sent them to enjoy the hospitalities of Netherrealm for a while.

She gave up on the bag, What she needed right now was Andy. Andy was the life-sized, canvas-covered, stuffed and weighted training dummy used to practice holds and throws in the absence of a sparring partner/victim. He was propped up on the far side of the ring, and Sonya held him up by the armpits, regarding the sad, lolling, melon-shaped head. When Andy was new and stiff-jointed, he’d had a comically thin thatch of red “hair” — short lengths of yarn sewn on by the distributor. Maybe the dummy had been designed as a practice target for self-defense classes, where hair-pulling and other desperate measures were routinely incorporated, but when it had arrived in the Special Forces base’s training room, no fewer than four enlisted soldiers and three commissioned officers had taken to calling it “Raggedy Andy”. Ironically, as Raggedy Andy grew increasingly ragged, the first part of his name dropped out of consistent use, and now he was simply known as Andy.

“Hey buddy,” said Sonya, smiling a little at the unfortunate thing. “Me again.”

She started with some simple throws, gripping different limbs to sling the dummy over her, behind her, away from her. Even gripping it by the arms and whipping it back and forth helped to practice maintaining balance and setting strong stances. It couldn’t stand on its own, so practicing takedowns were difficult, but if she leaned him against the ropes and was careful not to snag anything —

The training room door opened, and a young woman with the triple arrows of a sergeant trotted in and saluted hurriedly. “Lieutenant Blade — there’s an intruder on-base. We have him cornered near the southwest barracks, but he’s pretty well-entrenched.”

Sonya returned the salute and jumped down from the boxing stage, following the sergeant out of the gym. “We’re within our rights to use lethal force, aren’t we? Why hasn’t this been taken care of? How did he get through the perimeter?”

They jogged through the halls, heading for the exit closest to the barracks. The other woman’s form was stiff and her gaze never faltered from the middle-distance ahead of them. Very formal, considering Sonya wasn’t even in uniform. 

“A non-lethal takedown was ordered by General Briggs -– we hope to detain and question the individual as to his purpose and methods in infiltrating our base, ma’am.” Her mouth twitched in the ghost of a smile. “He also made a disparaging remark as to the delicate sensibilities of our bureaucratic guests, and advised that if blood were shed, we clean it up politely before dawn.”

They came to the stairs — two flights until they would reach the exit.

“So why did my training need to be interrupted?”

“General Briggs said that you stood the best chance of getting him out in the open.”

Sonya frowned. For vengeance? The Black Dragon was all but eradicated, and the Red Dragon was on its last legs. Jarek was dead, Mavado was under surveillance in South America. Kano had fled to Outworld and, shameless parasite that he was, was feeding off of Shao Kahn’s engorged treasury. 

“Has the intruder killed anyone?”

“Not to my knowledge — we’ve got a few people pretty badly injured, but nothing life-threatening.” 

They mounted the landing and pushed through the exit doors. Darkness had fallen while Sonya was working out, but the moon overhead was full and bright enough to light the way, even without the massive floodlights being trained on C-barracks in the back of the compound. The residence buildings were uniform — four-story cinderblocks with tinted windows. Not pretty, but able to effectively house more than two hundred enlisted soldiers at any given time and, despite the unreliable plumbing in B-barracks, in relatively good spirits. The faces they passed as they moved through the gathering crowd were decidedly grim. Soldiers on shift were grouped at the back of the building, forming a neat semi-circle around the corner of the compound fencing, weapons trained for the possibility of a sudden rush. People who were off duty milled around in a soft perimeter, exchanging terse words and worried glares. 

Sonya glanced around, sampling the atmosphere. They were scared, angry — someone had invaded a space they had thought inviolably secure and threatened their fellows. Tense, pissed off soldiers with access to high-powered weaponry. The Outworld Investigation Agency put more emphasis on diplomacy than many domestic divisions of the Special Forces, but the enemy had made this personal, and she wasn’t prepared to enter the hot zone until she was absolutely certain that no friendlies with itchy trigger-fingers were going to fill her full of holes if she made any unexpected moves.

“Okay, people,” she called, voice ringing clear and stern across the group and silencing the hushed pockets of chatter. “Weapons down and push the perimeter back five yards. We’re taking this one alive. What you can do to help is to prep medical supplies and transport for the injured, but if you’re just standing around, you’re in the way.”

She didn’t wait for dissent, instead just bulling through the crowd and trusting them to respect her confidence. In the absence of organized contention, they complied — pajama-clad day shifters shuffling off in the direction of the field hospital and combat-ready soldiers lowering the barrels of their rifles. Good. She crossed the last few feet to the makeshift ring of soldiers, her boots crunching in the gravel. The night air clung to the cooling sweat on her skin, and she shivered at the chill of the wind picking up. She pushed through two guards, breaking out into the cleared area, and stopped short, an involuntary spasm of loathing and revulsion wracking her gut. 

The intruder grinned, seemingly at ease despite his situation, and swaggered a few steps closer. The floodlights flashed off the metal plating on his cheek and brow, but didn’t diminish the malicious glow of the red cybernetic eye.

“Kano,” she spat, disliking even the way his name felt in her mouth.

“Sonya Blade,” he breathed with mock reverence, spreading his arms wide. “Been too long, baby. Did you miss me?” 

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, refusing to engage in his inane idea of banter. "How did you get in?"

He shrugged, his real eye dark and calculating, measuring the distance between them. “Ask me real nice, and I just might tell you.” He stepped closer in a way that was clearly supposed to be casual, but the predatory angle of his head and set of his shoulders telegraphed his true intentions. 

Sonya sneered and dropped into a readied stance. “I don’t do ‘nice’. I assume you remember what happened the last time we fought?”

He bristled, losing his air of sleazy arrogance. “You got lucky, bitch! Don’t think it makes you better than me!”

She laughed, preparing for his attack. “I don’t think it makes me better — I _know_ it does.”

He bared his teeth and rushed her, gravel churning under his boots. She sidestepped and turned in, hooking a leg out to catch his feet and slamming a hand down between his shoulder blades. He landed on his hands and knees, and she kicked out at his ribs — he curled around the blow, seizing her leg and pulling her off-balance. She could see that he was going for one of his knives, and she committed to the fall, slinging a leg up over his head so that her heel caught his neck as she went down. The blow didn’t have as much force behind it as she would have liked, but it kept him from drawing his weapon. He scrambled up and tried to pin her shoulders, but his lunge was sloppy — she rolled away and got back to her feet. Her limbs were already getting heavy from her training, and she could feel her muscle responsiveness declining. She had to end this quickly, or she may not be the one to end it.

He drew himself up, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist and spitting off to the side. She curled her upper lip in distaste. His shit-eating smirk found its way back on his lips, and the rage in his eye seemed to ebb to relatively sane levels.

“You’re faster than I remembered,” he said, adopting a defensive stance. She frowned, reluctant to rush in. In the past, he'd been unfailingly aggressive to the point of carelessness -- it was one of his biggest flaws as a fighter, one that she'd exploited before. If he’d gained a measure of self-control that mitigated this flaw during his time in Outworld, he’d become even more of a threat, and it complicated her approach to this fight. He was a big enough target, to be sure, but he was faster than he looked, and too strong to match directly.

“Or you’ve just slowed down in your old age,” she said. She had hoped to draw him out again, but he just shook his head. The floodlights caught threads of silver in his dark hair, swallowed the lines of his face in stark shadow, and for an instant he seemed like a sinister golem — a man-shaped figure hewn from rough stone and given life by some diabolical entity. 

“I’ve got a job to do,” he said, shattering the illusion and beckoning her forward. “So let’s skip to the part where you embarrass yourself, and I tear open your ribcage in front of all your little stooges.”

“You’ve always been a crazy bastard, but that’s outright delusional,” she scoffed, circling him. “When this is over, I’ll hit the showers and what’s left of you will be carried down to the cell block.”

“Showers, eh?” He crouched, fingers clenched in open-palmed Tiger fists. “You feel dirty when you’re with me, then?”

“I always feel dirty when I step in shit,” she retorted, charging in and feinting with a punch to the right, but ducking to the left at the last second and snapping a kick out at his knee. 

He managed to raise his leg just enough to absorb the blow on his calf and swept with the force of it, leading with his elbow as he spun to her. She leaned back, letting it whiff by, scant inches from her throat. His ribs were momentarily exposed, and she stepped in — one, two, three, feeling the gauze wraps dig into her knuckles. He grunted, grabbed her shoulders to steady himself, and headbutted her. His skull met hers with a dull crack and she staggered back, woozy. It hadn’t been a direct hit — the disparity in their heights wasn’t too significant, but it was enough to make the angle awkward and force Kano to share in a touch of the disorientation. She had to get back in, had to finish him before her fatigue caught up with her adrenaline. She could tell by the strain on her knee that she’d planted her stance incorrectly, but she launched into the attack anyway.

“You know how long I’ve been waiting for this?” Kano hissed, blocking her jab at his face and sinking a punch into her stomach. It was like getting hit by a truck, and her lungs crumpled, refusing to fill again no matter how hard she choked and spluttered. A vice clenched around her throat and hoisted her into the air, bringing her face in so close to his that their noses touched.

“A long. Fucking. Time.” His voice was low and nasty — devoid of even the gloating teasing that typically enraged her. She kicked, but he only squeezed harder, and her vision started to gray around the edges. She reached for his face with one hand, scrabbling at the fingers that were choking her with the other. 

She touched his brow and clawed out, trying to gouge his good eye, but he jerked his head back and snapped forward, catching three of her fingers between his teeth and biting down hard so that she couldn’t pull away. His tongue surged against them, wet and hot and horrible, but at least he couldn’t talk anymore. Her other hand found his wrist, and she squeezed as hard as she could in the space between the bones of his forearm and the carpals, feeling the tendons and flesh shift.

He cursed, spitting out her fingers as his grip relaxed and she dropped from the chokehold. She gasped, taking in a shuddering lungful of the sweet night air. She didn’t have long before he recovered, so she marshaled her strength, thighs bunching taut beneath her, and rocketed upward, landing a devastating punch at the corner of his jaw that snapped his head back and sent him sprawling to the ground.

She followed through, pinning a knee to his chest and socking him in the good eye. The hand that he had bitten hurt too much for her to curl into a fist, so she used it to suppress his other shoulder as she hit him in the jaw again, and then in the side of his mouth. His skin was unpleasantly warm and clammy under her fists, and his body jerked dully with every blow. She realized that he wasn’t struggling anymore, and forced herself to stop. The wind wound around her sweaty face, refreshing against her heated flesh, and as the immediacy of combat faded away, she became conscious of cheers and clapping from the other soldiers.

Panting, she sank back on her heels, surveying the damage she’d done with satisfaction. The unmodified half of his face was swollen and his jaw was already darkening into a bruise beneath the beard. There was blood on his cheeks, but — she flexed her hand experimentally and winced — it was probably from her knuckles. His eye had closed, and the lid was flushed and puffy. His stupid vest hung open, exposing the thick swath of hair that covered his chest, trailed down his stomach, and disappeared below the line of his black pants. Were those tattoos on his arms? She hadn’t noticed during the fight, but stylized black dragons twined up his arms and snarled over his collarbones. 

Her chest was heaving, her pulse thundering in her ears. She wondered if she should check his pulse, but she could discern a slight rise and fall in his chest and stomach, and she’d rather not touch him if it wasn’t necessary. Laboriously, she got to her feet and nodded to her audience.

“Search him for… weapons and throw… him in detention,” she rasped with difficulty, massaging her aching throat. She looked down at his unconscious body, wondering if they were obligated to provide medical attention, but decided he could live through the night. She toed his side with the tip of her boot, grimacing. Four soldiers darted in and lifted him onto a stretcher, carrying him off to the on-site containment cells. She’d deal with him tomorrow — what she needed now was a shower and sleep.

“As you were!” she yelled out to the people that hadn’t dispersed yet, and turned back to HQ. God, her throat was painful. Her ribs ached and her stomach was uneasy. Her head hurt and her hands were throbbing. Her thighs quivered with each step, but she didn’t allow herself to limp, didn’t let her chin fall an inch below standard, and focused on the crunch of gravel beneath her boots as she took one step after another. Left, right, left, right, shower, sleep. She sighed, closing her eyes and picturing Kano flying back after her uppercut, his body arcing perfectly through the air, limp with shock. Not a bad fight, all things considered. Not bad at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most chapters won't be this long, but I wanted this to be in Sonya's perspective. Let me know if there's anything I can do to improve the action scenes, pacing, or any other parts/aspects that may stick out to you.


	3. The Grand Switcheroo

Kano regained consciousness with a start and more than a few blistering words. Ouch, _fuck_ — his jaw was in pretty bad shape. Not broken — he worked it slowly, opening and closing his mouth as if to yawn. Not broken, but plenty painful. Fucking bitch. He glared around him, unsurprised to find that Sonya had kept her word. At least it was a fairly spacious cell. If he’d cared enough to get up from the cot they’d left him on and walk around, he’d be able to take a full three paces over to the old-fashioned bars, and the sidewalls seemed to be at least ten feet apart — maybe more. Basic john in the corner, but no sink. His thin cot and its frame were the only other fixtures in the cell, and the floor was a cold expanse of smooth concrete.

It didn’t matter — he’d be out soon enough. As he’d expected, they’d taken his knives and shoelaces. He’d been changed into a plain cotton shirt that was irritatingly abrasive against his skin, but they’d left him in his pants and hadn’t confiscated the boots themselves. Which meant that he still had the spell from Shang Tsung tucked inside them, although with sorcery involved, Kano doubted that it could have been removed from him even if they had taken the boots.

He didn’t go for it yet — didn’t want to be interrupted.

Kano got off the cot, wincing at the soreness in his legs and ribs. Shit, but he’d let her do a number on him. He put a hand to his side and took a few deep breaths. Tight and complaining, but no shooting white shock that would indicate a fracture. He lifted his shirt and craned around to check for bruising -- his skin over the painful area was red with a few greenish-plum splotches. Yeah, that was gonna get worse. He grimaced, inwardly berating himself for letting Blade get in close enough to pull that shit and, worse, for letting her get back out without landing more than a clumsy headbutt.

As much as he hated to admit it, it was probably for the best that he'd been...unable to kill her. If he'd succeeded in choking the life from the bitch or if he'd broken her neck, or shoved his fist through her chest and wrenched out her still-beating heart, or any of the various ways in which he had fantasized about ending her, the other soldiers would likely have taken him out, regardless of their orders. His humiliation would be nothing to hers once he’d completed his mission and neutralized her precious Outworld Intelligence Agency’s portal tech. He grinned. Wouldn’t it be _tragic_ if the very sabotage that fucked over Special Forces were to be carried out by one of their most trusted officers?

He stood and went to the bars, limping a little. He squashed his face up against the unrelenting iron and peered up and down the hallway beyond. He couldn’t see anyone. He cocked his head, listened for a minute, and didn’t get anything. Good. Time to work some magic.

Kano returned to the cot and tugged off his boot. The deceptively fragile-looking scrap of parchment fluttered out and fell to the floor. He kicked off the other boot for the sake of symmetry, and threw them both over by the can. A small groan escaped his lips as he leaned over to pick up the sheet. At least she’d be the one to feel it for a couple days. Dramatic irony, that. Well, he was pretty sure it was dramatic irony. He’d passed his Literature class in secondary school, but that was mostly due to the fact that he’d threatened his teacher with castration if he received a failing mark.

Shang Tsung had said he needed blood. Was he bleeding? He touched his jaw and brow, fingers coming away with rusty flakes of dried blood, which he awkwardly brushed off over the paper. Was that enough? He tucked his tongue into the gap between his back teeth and his cheek, probing for any looseness or tears. He thought he tasted blood, so he sucked in and spat on the spell. Couldn't hurt.

Okay — now the concentration bit. He closed his eye and there she was, jaw set and brows furrowed in that self-righteously adamant scowl that he hated so much. Her thick lips — the upper raised in disgust, exposing the white point of a canine tooth. Her pert nose — still damnably straight despite his many attempts to rearrange the topography of her face. High cheekbones, strong chin, steely blue eyes that blazed accusingly at him. Blonde. Lean musculature, but built like a swimmer with thick shoulders. Breasts high and pressing against the confines of whatever tight top she’d decided to test regulations with. Taut core — firm abs.

Kano smirked, remembering the resistance of her flesh, muscle, organs against his fist as he sank it into her gut. Her hoarse grunt at impact, the way she’d spasmed, eyes popping, as she gasped against the vacuum. The perfect black “O” of her mouth, her eyes squeezing shut and the tendons jumping in her neck. The cartilage of her esophagus straining against his palm, and the weak, almost gentle touch of her fingers on his brow, their sharp taste and brittle solidity against his tongue.

The cell felt humid. He peeked at the spell in his hands, and nothing seemed to be happening. More? He could do that.

Her sweaty, muscled calf flexing under his hand, then the stiff cords of her hamstrings. If he'd been a little faster with the knife -- no, had to think about her. Doubt in her eyes -- fear and adrenaline widening her pupils. The split-second of their foreheads touching, the sinus-rattling collision that sent her staggering back. Her fingers like steel, burrowing at his wrist. The desperate swell of her chest as she sucked in a lungful of the air he'd denied her. The defiance in her eyes as she crouched beneath him, face tipped up to track the last punch he'd really felt in that fight.

He breathed in sharply, catching his lower lip in his teeth and slowly drawing it free. He started to get creative. What her hair felt like, gathered in his fist. Her yelps and whimpers softer, higher-pitched, coming fast and clear or slow and muffled. How hot and wet she was inside, so fucking tight around him. Her fingers boring into his shoulder blades, his lower back. Her taut skin against his teeth, firm beneath his tongue. To be fair, he wasn't thinking about the Sonya Blade of reality anymore, but it had been enough for whatever parameters that the spell was operating under, and a bright light flared against his closed eyelid.

Of course it would start to work now. He opened his eye and watched the green sigil flare brighter and brighter, until the poisonous glow enveloped the sheet and his hands. Just as suddenly, the luminescence abated, and he was holding a plain square of parchment again.

He glared. “For the love of—”

Threads of red and gold spidered out from the center of the paper, fracturing it into thousands of irregular pieces. The pieces blackened, then dissolved in his hands, leaving not even a speck of ash on his fingers as evidence of the spell’s existence. Okay, then. He shifted his weight — carefully — and waited for it to take effect.

And waited.

Nothing was happening.

“What the fuck?” He clenched his fists. Had they double-crossed him? Tricked him into getting trapped away on Earthrealm like an inconvenient rat? There were easier ways to get rid of someone. Permanent ones, too. Or was it just a dud? He didn’t know much about magic, but he didn’t think sorcerers of Shang Tsung’s caliber were supposed to have, well, performance issues. Maybe it was a slow-burn kind of thing.

He hated waiting.

“Fuck.” He lay back on the cot and glowered up at the featureless ceiling. What time was it, even? How long had he been out? Hell, he didn’t even know what time it had been when he’d come out of the goddam portal to begin with. It’d been dark, but the time of sunset varied with season and geography, and he’d been in Outworld too long to have a sense for the state of things in Texas. There was a light fixture above his bed—covered in heavy plastic. It was off, but whether that signified a simulated light/day cycle or if it was just a shitty broken light was impossible to tell. The orangish light from the hall was enough to see by, though there really wasn’t much to see.

Kano sighed irritably. He had to face the possibility that the spell, whether provided with genuine intentions or not, hadn’t worked. If he couldn’t swap bodies, he’d have to get himself out of here and finish the job as best he could on his own. He didn’t want to rely on the sorcerers pulling him out at the end of it, but it would be damn hard to walk out the bloody gates. He considered bargaining with Special Forces, but they’d never let him go, especially after he’d smacked a few people around earlier. Only if there was no other way out—he wouldn’t give Blade the satisfaction. Fine. If he had to break out, he’d do it. Not in this state, though—he’d need to take a day or two to recuperate, and then he’d see how these bars stood up to his eye laser. It’d probably be drained by the time he’d melted enough to be effective, but once he found his confiscated gear and was reunited with his knives, he wouldn’t need anything else. He closed his eye, regulated his breathing, and drifted off into a black, dreamless sleep.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

He woke up warm and tangled in crisp, clean sheets. The sweet white-gold light of morning filtered into the room through the slats of the window blinds and illuminated bars of exposed flesh. He blinked a few times, momentarily confused by the smooth hairlessness of the leg that had worked free of the covers during the night, the volume of long blonde hair that snarled across the pillow beneath his beardless cheek. The fuzz of sleep cleared away, and he grinned, holding up a slim-fingered hand for inspection. The skin on her knuckles was cracked, frayed, and scared, but it was definitely her skin, her hand. It had worked.

He laughed, for once enjoying the smug sound of Blade’s voice.

“It worked,” he said aloud, stretching her mouth experimentally, running her tongue over her straight teeth. “Worked. Work.” Her voice was ragged and painful from her near-strangulation last night, but more alarming was the fact that it had his accent. Must’ve been a nature versus nurture thing—not covered by the spell. He’d need to watch that if he wanted to stay undetected.

He threw the sheets back and sat up, running a hand through the mane of hair that wasn’t half as smooth and orderly as it always seemed in the field. Surprisingly soft, though. The movement pulled the plain shirt he wore, fabric dragging interestingly across his chest. Not a bad deal. He considered running a thorough inspection of his new body, but decided it could wait until he’d gotten oriented to everything else. The transition period would be the most risky, but once he had his feet under him, so to speak, he’d be able to relax a bit and take a little more pleasure in the job. First step would be getting dressed for an average day at work.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, admiring the shapely calves and the pale scarring that covered her thighs. That looked like flechette damage, there. And here was a thick, raised line of scar tissue—was that from one of his knives? He couldn’t remember. He hoped so. Fresh bruising dappled her thighs and shins. It was nice to know the bitch didn’t just shrug off everything he threw at her.

He stood, enjoying the smooth speed and balance of her lighter frame. You didn’t realize how gravity affected you until you were in a different body. She was sore from their fight too, but, he noted with irritation, not as sore as he had been. He stretched, working the cozy remnants of sleep out of his back, shaking them out of his arms. Again, too much movement in his chest. That was going to be distracting. He scowled, crossing the room to her dresser.

First drawer was socks. How many socks did one person need? There had to be at least twenty pairs here. Bugger that. He didn’t think he owned more than five. He picked a pair at random and threw them back on the bed. Second drawer had underwear. Mostly white and black, although he did glimpse some flashes of color buried in a deeper layer before he closed the drawer. Bras in the third. One side seemed to be devoted to conventional wired ones—differentiated cups and the like—while the other had folded articles that looked like a cross between the top half of a pair of coveralls and a bikini top. He grabbed one and held it up, discovering that the material it was made of had an element of stretch to it. Still, it seemed more restrictive than the other kind, so he pulled off the nightshirt and worked the band over her breasts, trying not to focus on the softness of her skin. There. Nice and constricted. He took a few experimental deep breaths, ribcage expanding against the confines of the sportsbra. Weird.

Hair was falling in his face again, and he shoved it back with a growl. Why the hell did she keep it so long? He stomped over to her closet and found a row of shirts and vests, spanning the monochromatic spectrum from white to pitch black. He hadn’t seen her in casual wear, so he picked out a dark gray shirt that seemed plain enough. Pants were hanging on the right, and he grabbed what looked like black camo-printed cargo pants and tugged them on. They were a little tight around his ass—was she gaining weight? Or was that how they were supposed to fit? He squatted a few times and decided that it wouldn’t hinder his movements too much if it came down to a fight. There were a couple doors leading out of the bedroom, and he realized that he didn’t even know if she lived on base. What if he couldn’t find his way to the Special Forces facility? Make it through their security? If he failed this job, being stuck in his enemy’s body was the least of his worries.

He grimaced and picked a door. Bathroom. He ran some water from the tap, splashed it over a face that felt foreign—too round, too smooth, lips too big and soft. He looked up into the mirror, an automatic lurch of anger twisting his gut at the sight of Special Forces General Sonya Blade so close in front of him. Hate in her eyes, neat brows furrowed, stubborn jaw set. Bizarre. He felt his chin, watching the reflection copy his movements. Her neck had a broad purple bruise, darkest at the points where his fingers had pressed into her flesh. He touched her throat, fingers spreading to cover the injury, and tightening until he felt her windpipe tense against the web of his hand again, her arteries fluttering against his thumb and forefinger.

Sonya grinned at him from the mirror, hair wild, wet face dripping and darkening her shirt. His crotch felt warm and oddly numb, nerves buzzing deliciously when he shifted his weight.

“This is so fucking weird,” he said in her voice, breath constricted. “Weird. Wee-yurd. Fuck.” He liked how his teeth pinched her lower lip, how his tongue arched against the roof of her mouth. “Fuck.”

He pulled her hair back and composed her features in the stern, self-righteous expression that was so damnably familiar.

“Fuck you, Kano,” he said in his best Yank accent. It didn’t sound half bad. “You bastard.”

He laughed. “I’m Special Forces Lieutenant Sonya Blade. Sohnyuh. Lieutenant Blade.”

He mussed her hair into that disordered, wild, post-sex-looking bedhead mane she evidently woke up with every day, leaning over the counter so that her breath misted against the mirror and her eyes dominated his vision.

“Fuck me, Kano,” he breathed, tilting his head back to look at the bruise on her throat again. He smirked. “And that’s an order.”

He laughed again. He wondered if she was having as much fun in his body as he was in hers.


	4. The Grand Switcheroo Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I'm being really inconsistent with chapter length, but they should generally be a bit longer than this. Thanks for reading this far--let me know if you have any thoughts or suggestions in going forward! 
> 
> Regarding the dysphoria content warning/tag, this chapter has some, and chapter 6 should have some as well, so if that's a subject that affects you, be advised.

She woke slowly, emerging from sleep with difficulty. Her room was too dark, her bed oddly stiff. For a moment she thought she’d woken before her alarm again, in the gray haze of pre-dawn, but when her vision cleared, she realized that she was in an unfamiliar place, facing a blank gray wall. God, why did her jaw hurt so much? Everything felt swollen and heavy. She couldn’t open an eye. Was she sick? Did she overreach in sparring yesterday? She yawned and flinched at an unexpected prickling at her neck. She clapped a hand to her throat, prepared to tear away a makeshift garrote, but was met with warm flesh and stiff hair.

“What—” she froze at the sound that had passed through her lips, had come from her throat, originated from the depths of her chest. It wasn’t her voice. It was too low, too rough, too—she seized up, every muscle clenching. There was too much of it, too much of her, it was all wrong. She ran a hand up over a thick, firmly muscled torso to the broad, flat plane of a very male chest. She held up her hands, searching the deep creases in the dry palms, the pale scars that crosshatched the knuckles and sides of the index fingers, the calluses that ridged the webs between thumbs and forefingers and the heels of the palms. Knife-wielder, she thought, stomach not sinking so much as plummeting away. The hair that thatched the backs of her hands, her forearms, and—she pulled her shirt collar away to look down—her chest, was thick and so dark brown that it was almost black. With trembling hands, she reached up to her cheek and touched the eye that wouldn’t open.

Her fingers met cold metal and slick glass.

“Fuck.” She felt nauseous, feeling what she knew was his tongue moving in her—in his mouth. His chest swelling with every breath, his ankles dangling off the edge of the cot, his stomach roiling greasily with whatever his last meal had been, burning at the base of his esophagus. She jerked his fingers away from the faceplate, settling them on the neutral cotton of the mattress cover. Deep breaths. There had to be an explanation. Some reasonable explanation for why she was stuck in the body of the only person she had ever truly hated.

Normally she’d talk it through to herself, but it would be his voice reasoning with her, and she couldn’t handle that. She swallowed, staring up at the ceiling of the cell. It had to be magic. Outworld sabotage? Had anyone else been affected? What had happened to her body? Was this another alternate reality mess? Her jaw hurt like a bitch—she remembered clocking Kano in her universe yesterday, but that piece of shit wasn’t loved anywhere, so it’s not as though it weren’t possible for an alternate version of him to have been socked in the jaw. Pretty improbable, though. 

She waited for a moment, putting aside her revulsion and focusing on how it felt to just be. Dense. Aching. Inflated. She sat up and it was like moving through water. She sighed, recoiled, and decided it would be better to breathe through her nose. She heard footsteps, the heavy slap of combat boots, and glanced up to the bars of her cell.

“Continental breakfast for our VIP guest.” A Spec Ops private sauntered into view, holding a plastic tray and grinning proudly. She didn’t recognize him.

She stood, repressing a shudder at the shifting of too much flesh between the legs, and started towards the bars. The private’s smile vanished and he transferred the tray to one hand, using the other to draw his sidearm.

“Don’t come any closer, motherfucker. These aren’t rubber bullets.”

She held her hands up, palms out, and took a step back.

“I’m not going to hurt you, private.” His voice sounded strange without the accent. Why didn’t she have the accent?

“No shit, you’re not. Back on the cot if you want to eat.”

She scowled but obliged. Of course he’d be defensive. For all intents and purposes, Kano was still in the cell—she wouldn’t have given the criminal the benefit of the doubt if she were dying of thirst in the desert and he offered her a sip from his canteen. The springs beneath her cot wheezed as she sat.

“I’d like to speak to Major Briggs, please.” She kept her tone level, as inoffensive as possible.

“Well aren’t we polite," sneered the guard, but he was still pale and his hands shook as he reholstered his weapon. "The Major will talk to you when he damn well feels like it. After that shit you pulled last night, you’d better hope that’s all he feels like doing to you.” The private put the tray on the floor and shoved it under the bars with his boot. Bits of scrambled egg fell off the side and lay there, glistening wetly. “From what I hear, though, the Lieutenant's the one you should really be worried about.”

She nodded grimly, hoping her quiescence would satisfy the guard. He spat into the cell and moved off. She got off the cot and picked up the tray, lifting the napkin to reveal lukewarm eggs, undercooked bacon, and a slice of bread that had been more warmed than toasted. A shitty breakfast, but infinitely more than Kano deserved.

She took the tray back to the cot and set to, more to occupy herself than anything. There weren’t any utensils, so she used the bread to shovel eggs into her—his—mouth. She started to tear the bacon, peeling the fat away from the sections of red muscle, but the sight of his grease-covered fingers shining in the artificial light sickened her. These hands had committed so many atrocities, had been soaked in so much blood—some of it had even been hers. Hell, he’d almost strangled her last night with one of them. What else had he done since he’d last washed those hands? What had he touched? There was no way she’d risk… tasting anything. The eggs roiled in her stomach and she discarded the tray, cleaning her fingers off on the napkin with jerky, violent motions, and desperately avoiding thinking further down that particular path.

This wasn’t permanent, she assured herself. It couldn’t be. She would find a way out of this…situation. She’d get back into her body and find out who had been responsible for this bullshit, and she’d make them pay. She had to talk to Jax—he’d believe her. Eventually. If this was another universe, she hoped they knew about alternate realms—it’d be much more difficult to explain things if they hadn’t had contact with different realities, especially if this universe’s Sonya hated their Kano as much as she did hers. His fists—her fists, for now—clenched, but she resisted the urge to throw the remains of her less than satisfactory breakfast against the cell wall. If she wanted anyone to believe her, she’d need to control her temper and act as civil and agreeable as possible. So, in essence, antithetical to the way that disgusting mockery of a human being would in this situation. She was breathing too rapidly, and a searing white pain in her jaw brought her attention to the fact that she’d been clenching her teeth too tightly.

She took a deep breath, held it for seven seconds, and released it slowly. She had to keep her head. Right now, she was deeper in enemy territory than she had ever thought possible, but the real danger was her home, her friends and colleagues. If she couldn’t convince Special Forces that she was Lieutenant Sonya Blade trapped in Kano’s body, she’d find herself in a permanent cell, if not deported to one of the thirty-five countries in which the criminal shitbag was wanted for violations punishable by death. She swallowed, looking down to the hands in his lap. Her hands. Her lap. She had to reconcile herself with her current body if she ever wanted to get back to her familiar one.

Fine.

She let go of another deep breath and began tidying up the remains of her rejected breakfast tray. She walked back to the bars, napkin in hand, and cleaned up the fallen bits of egg as best as she could, put the trash on the plate atop the soggy bread and shredded bacon, and slid the tray out into the hall for convenient collection. Then, Lieutenant Sonya Blade walked back to the uncomfortable detention cot and sat, marshaling her thoughts and arguments for the coming audience that would likely decide her fate.


	5. The Most Important Meal of the Day

Sonya’s apartment was in the officer’s dormitory wing of the Special Forces base. Kano couldn’t suppress a relieved grin when he exited the hall and found a convenient directory graphic posted on the corridor wall. He automatically tried to scan it with his cybernetic eye, but Blade had that now, so he’d have to memorize it the old-fashioned way. Standing in the hall while he committed the base layout to memory was too conspicuous, though, so he fumbled at her utility belt until he found her phone. Thankfully, she didn’t have a lock on it. Awfully trusting. 

“Tsk, tsk, sweet thing, what if you lost it out and about?” he muttered, swiping through her applications until he found the camera function. He took a few hasty shots and stowed the phone back in his belt, making a note to go through it later. Who knew what else she had on there? Well, he would, of course. He doubted there would be anything professionally significant, beyond a few phone numbers or potential e-mail access, but the personal information was promising. If he didn’t kill her before extraction, he’d be damned if he left without getting some seriously potent dirt. Hopefully enough to bury her with. He wondered what other pictures she had saved.

Her stomach tweaked, and he consulted the directory—left, right, left to the mess. He’d grab some grub, listen in to a few conversations, practice his Yank paramilitary impression, and hopefully get an idea of the expectations of his cover. He hadn’t found a calendar or anything in her apartment, and her computer was password protected. The phone might have some kind of agenda application, but he should be able to browse that over a plate of something hot. 

He found the mess hall easily, and joined the short queue to the buffet. The room itself was vast, filled with long folding tables with the invariably wobbly attached stools that he’d sat at in primary school. He hoped the food was better here. From the empty plates scattered around the various tables and the beleaguered cafeteria staff wiping down the more cluttered ones, it was clear that the bulk of the breakfast crowd had already come and gone. It’d be nice to eat without too much of an audience, but if they were dispatching to actual shifts, he was running in danger of being late to a potential commitment. He screwed his mouth to the side as he thought, stepping forward with the flow of the queue. The smell of hot pastry wafted seductively from the buffet, and he decided that Sonya wasn’t feeling too well this morning and needed a good breakfast sticking to her ribs before a grueling day of doing whatever the fuck the bloody cunt did when she wasn’t running after him.

He snagged a plate and loaded it with three steaming Belgian waffles, a healthy spoonful of scrambled eggs, four sausages dripping with grease, and a sloppy pile of crisp hashbrowns. He scraped a pat of butter across the topmost waffle and drenched it with syrup, swallowing against the saliva that was gathering in his mouth. It definitely looked and smelled better than anything he’d had at primary school. Or anything he'd had in the past few years living in Outworld. Charred lizard got old after a while, afterall.

He picked an empty table and doubled back for fluids—a glass of milk and another of OJ. The pitchers were ice cold, and the tactile shock of the glasses in his warm hands was fantastic. He grinned as he sat and started attacking the food. It’d been a while since he’d had waffles, and these were bloody good—crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside and sweet all around. The sausage was a little overdone to his tastes, but savory and piping hot, and it went well with the hashbrowns. Swallowing hurt, but he kind of liked that, too. His eyes were watering, but he wasn't sure if that was from the heat of the food, its heavenly taste, or the dragging ache it inflicted in his throat with each frenzied gulp. He had just started on the eggs when someone tapped him on the back.

“Go ‘way,” he growled through a mouthful of cheesy scramble. He glared over his shoulder at the intruder, and promptly inhaled what he hadn’t managed to swallow.

“Whoa, you okay?” Jax’s heavy metal hand slapped at his back as he hacked eggs across the table. “I thought you were grilling Kano this morning.”

He tried to speak, but when he took a breath it only aggravated his coughing, and he bent over his plate, leaning on his elbows for support. His eyes were burning and he couldn’t breathe, but his mind was working feverishly. He wasn’t prepared to confront Jax—the man knew Blade too well to be fooled at length, and he hadn’t even been able to practice with a rando. He had to keep this encounter as brief as possible, but he couldn’t set off any alarm bells with Briggs.

“Take your time—here.” Jax handed him the orange juice, and Kano took it gratefully, gulping greedily to buy more time. He emptied the glass and still had nothing good.

“Thanks,” he gasped at last, consigning himself to fate.

“Yeah. Are you alright?” Briggs settled into the seat next to him, concern plain on his face. It was weird to see anything but anger and disgust directed his way, but Kano managed to smile and nod.

“You just, ah, surprised me.” His voice was ragged from the coughing, so hopefully that would disguise any tells in his accent.

“Sorry about that—I figured you’d already eaten. Letting him sweat, huh?”

It took a minute to connect the last to the half-registered earlier words, but when he did, Kano shrugged, adopting a nonchalant pose as he skewered a sausage. 

“I’m having a bit of a celebration. Why rush for the sake of that scum’s comfort?” The skin resisted his teeth at first, but he punctured it with an incisor and the juice ran down his chin as he chewed.

Jax snorted, sweeping bits of spit-up egg away from his table space with a silver hand that caught the light with every motion. “Damned inconsiderate of him to show up the night before waffle day, then. You want me to come with you when you’ve finished? You hit him pretty good last night, but he’s talking just fine, more’s the pity. The private on shift said he asked to speak to me specifically.”

Kano chewed deliberately. That would be a problem. He’d need to keep her from interfering, but he was loath to inflict any lasting damage on his own body. “Asked for you? I’m jealous.” He swallowed, staring intently down at his last waffle as he cut off a large bite. He was pretty full already, but if he was chewing, it was an excuse not to talk. “I can take care of it. He won’t shut up around me. I’ll suss out how he got here and why he came.” He stuffed the piece of waffle in his mouth and crushed it against his cheek with his tongue, the sweet syrup and melted butter trickling down his throat.

“Sounds good. I’ll tap our sources in the Black Dragon—see if they’ve heard anything.” Jax swiveled, eyeing the buffet table. “Waffles good today?”

Kano emitted an affirmative grunt. The mention of the Black Dragon had caught him offguard. He'd heard his old organization had been all but stamped out, but if even a semblance of the old structure remained, he'd have a far easier time revitalizing it. He wasn't really the sentimental type, but he'd made a name for himself there, and the kind of fear and respect he'd earned in the criminal underworld of Earthrealm would make it so much more convenient to reestablish himself here if Outworld was no longer the most profitable place for him. No good to have SF operatives, though--he'd need to purge the ranks. Briggs didn't seem to notice the vacancy of his table partner's face, too preoccupied with the scent and thought of the surprisingly delicious cafeteria waffles.

“Of course they are, they always are. I’m gonna get some—I think they’ve just put out a fresh batch.” Briggs stood and started to head off, but checked himself, pointing at the seat he’d just vacated and raising his eyebrows at Kano. “You mind?”

“Uh, I’ll be pushing off shortly,” he said hurriedly, terrified by the prospect of spending an entire meal with the man that was, as far as he could tell, Blade’s best and only friend. There was a flicker of surprise in Jax’s eyes at the response, and he realized how out of character he was, and covered his ass with a grin. “You’re welcome to sit though, Major, just don’t be too broken up when I leave.”

Briggs returned his smile, even winked. “I promise not to cry. Too hard.” He left for the food queue and Kano slumped against the table. Surreal. He had to pretend he liked the man, and apparently it had worked? He didn’t want to test his luck, though, so he wolfed down the rest of his food, even though he was so full that his stomach was aching. In his body, he could have cleaned that plate in five minutes and be well on his way to finishing another by now, but apparently Sonya’s stomach hit capacity sooner. Annoying. The waffles were very good—he’d have liked to have put a few more away. 

Jax returned, carrying a plate heaped with waffles soaked in syrup in one hand, with a smaller dish of strawberries and a dollop of what looked like whipped cream in the other. Noting the direction of Kano’s stare, he shrugged sheepishly. “It’s the start of the season, but these look really good. Had to try ‘em. You want some?”

Kano held up a hand. “I’m good, mate. Not in a, ah, fruit mood right now.”

Jax cocked his head, but quickly dismissed whatever had bothered him. He sat and started layering the strawberries on top of each waffle, stacking them into a tower. Kano threw his head back, chugged his milk desperately, eyes fixed on the light fixtures overhead as he gulped.

He finished it, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and sat for another minute, looking out at the rest of the cafeteria with what he hoped was casual absentmindedness. At length, he sighed and stood, piling his glasses and utensils atop his plate. 

“I’d better go see to our unwelcome guest. See you around.”

“You’re gonna clean that up, right?” There was a note of disbelief in Briggs’ voice as he indicated the spray of partially masticated egg bits on the table.

Kano’s first instinct was to say ‘That’s what the staff is for’, but he could see something else entirely was expected. 

“Yah, of course,” he said, nodding over to the buffet table. “I’m gonna get some more napkins first.” Briggs watched him go, turning back to his leaning tower of Belgium as Kano’s dirty dishes clattered into the refuse bin.

Kano glowered as he headed back to the buffet island. Why should he have to clean it off? The wait staff was paid to clean up after diners—he’d just be doing their job for them. It was a waste of his time. He snatched three napkins with enough force to tug the napkin holder off the edge of the table. Thankfully, his reflexes were fast enough to stop it from falling, and he nudged it back into place without anyone questioning him. He took a deep breath, made an effort to smooth away the irritated expression. He’d be fooling himself if he thought things were going well with Jax. He’d been slipping up, and he couldn’t afford any more mistakes. Calm.

He strode back to the table, using the napkins to sweep the spit and egg briskly into one palm, dumping it into the rubbish bin and wiping his hands on his pants. He took an exaggerated breath and flashed a smile to Jax, who had just popped a berry in his mouth.

“Okay, I’m off. Keep me posted with the Dragon contacts?” With any luck, he could make off with a list of the spies and take them out before breathing life back into the Black Dragon. Then he'd pay Special Forces Headquarters another visit, and there wouldn't be a cell left to hold him when he was done. The thought lent something genuine to his smile. 

Unaware of his companion's thought process, Briggs covered his mouth as he replied. “Will do. Good luck with that asshole—let me know if you need anything.”

“You got it, sir.” He waved and left, swinging his hips with the flow of each stride. He didn’t think they were fucking, wasn’t sure if they were or had ever been attracted to each other, but anything that would prevent Briggs from dwelling too long on the conversation would be welcome. The movement only exacerbated his stomachache, and he slowed as soon as he exited the cafeteria. His legs were fucking sore, too. Maybe he should've just surrendered instead of fighting her--his body wouldn't be much better when he got back into it. He tried to keep a purposeful pace as he wandered the halls in search of another directional diagram, but the combination of gastric discomfort and residual anxiety from his unexpected breakfast encounter quickly exhausted his admittedly negligible store of patience. 

He passed a fresh-faced boy in an unmarked uniform and grabbed his sleeve.

“Oi, kid—pop quiz,” he snarled. “Where’s the detention area?”

The youth paled behind his liberal coating of freckles and stammered out directions: down the hall, to the right, down two flights, first left, third right. Kano released him and continued down the hall.

“Good job, soldier. At ease,” he tossed over his shoulder, tightening his ponytail. Fairly easy. He could remember that. A stitch flared at his right side and he grimaced. To the right, down two, left, third right. He’d get there. If he found a restroom on the way, all the better.


	6. Who's on First

Why had no one come to question her yet? Her internal clock said it had to be at least ten a.m., and it felt like hours since her miserable excuse for a breakfast. Of course, her perception of time may have been stilted by the monotony of her surroundings. You could only sit on a thin cot and stare out the bars of your cell for so long. She’d tried to use the time productively — to plan out her defense for when Jax finally came, to think ahead to what her next steps would be once released, but really there weren’t many options. Once out of the cell, she needed to contact Raiden — surely the god would know if there had been any disturbances in the fabric of reality that would result in, in this. She stared at her hands, clenched them and watched the tendons ripple in his wrists, the muscle shift in her meaty forearms.

The nausea was going away. She was getting used to this body, which, subjectively, she found abhorrent, but it would make everything easier. It would be best if she developed some familiarity with its capabilities. If things didn’t go as well with Jax, she may need to break out on her own steam, which meant facing heavy opposition from Special Forces in the heart of their headquarters. Kano’s raw strength would come in handy, but she needed to learn more about the mechanics of how he moved, whether certain of the holds and throws that she had trained with for so long in her own body were more or less effective in his. She’d be relying on stealth, on swift and silent takedowns — all nonlethal. She was adamant that she wouldn’t kill any of her own.

She listened for a moment, verifying that the guard who had retrieved her tray about an hour and a half ago wasn’t coming down for another check. No approaching footsteps, no aimless whistling, humming, or muttering. She couldn’t even hear anyone breathing. If she were less mentally secure, the isolation and lack of stimulation would have crossed the border from boring to emotionally exhausting, but to be truthful, she had always been comfortable in solitude. Now it was both a convenience and a necessity. She got off the cot and started stretching, spreading her legs and slowly sweeping low from side to side, broad fingertips brushing the tops of her wide feet. She did a few squats, pulled her arms tightly across her chest — left, then right. She sat on the floor, extending one leg and tucking the foot of the other against her knee, leaning forward and reaching until she could grab the extended foot and feel the back of her calf and knee burn. She’d always found stretching to be very calming, and despite her current condition, this time was no exception. The space she took up, the room she had to move around herself was different, but the muscles responded the same, and soon she felt warm and limber, limbs tingling with the anticipation of more exacting activity.

She eyed the confines of the cell. It was a twelve-by-six-by-ten, so not as roomy as she would have liked, but not impossible to work with. She adopted a ready stance, correcting her feet until they were slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, putting her weight on the balls of her feet. She dropped it, then popped back into position, repeating the movements until they felt natural. She tried a few twist punches in slow-motion, rolling her fist over as she extended her arm. The dragon tattoo winding around her bicep and shoulder rippled and seemed to grin up at her; she grimaced. 

One, two, one, alternating left and right. She sped up, throwing in a couple jabs, hooks, and uppercuts into a kind of routine. When she felt reasonably comfortable with the motions, she dropped to the floor and swept a leg, spinning clockwise. She popped up, threw a few more punches, and then dropped for another leg sweep, spinning counterclockwise. Ready position again — adjust the feet.

As much as she hated to admit it, Kano was in good shape and his body was performing perfectly, outside of the injuries. She’d expected him to be slower, but once she’d gotten used to the extra mass, it was almost exhilarating to have so much brute power at easy disposal. She’d need more than that if things went belly-up, though. From all the scars on his arms and legs, he didn’t seem to put too much of a priority in evasive maneuvers, so she decided to try a few combat rolls.

Sonya moved as close as was comfortable to the right wall, checking behind her to make sure she’d be clear of the cot. Okay. She squared up with the bars, dropped into her ready position, and launched herself to the left, landing on her shoulder and wrenching her body around to pull through the roll until her feet were under her and she could spring back up and into her ready position. A little awkward — the breadth of his shoulders and the sheer size of him made it feel slow and vulnerable to her, but she moved to the left wall, squared with the back, and tried again. Better, but still not great. Curling up hurt her ribs, but it was more of a discomfort than serious aggravation — she could work past it.

She sprung into a forward roll, but realized too late that she hadn’t adjusted correctly for his height and ended up smacking her cheek and forehead heavily against the concrete floor, sending off a blinding explosion of agony in her jaw. She yelped and curled up instinctively in fetal position, hands flitting over the area, trying to soothe the pain. She swiped around her gumline on the right side, testing the teeth to see if any were loose. Nothing she could feel, and no blood that she could taste. It figured that the one time she’d managed to land a solid blow with lasting impact, she’d be the one to suffer for it. She worked her mouth tentatively, opening and closing it until the soreness receded. Grimly, she got to her feet and tried again in slow motion, using her hands to guide her through a basic somersault. 

It was frustrating to do this slowly, but that little slip-up had demonstrated how important it was to be careful about this, and how necessary it was to practice. Another somersault — up into the ready stance. This time her feet found the correct placement without adjustment. Good. Some more punches, drop to sweep, ease into a sideroll, up to ready again. His heartbeat was steady despite the thin sheen of sweat that was beginning to gather over his limbs. She felt a bead of sweat trickle down her nose towards her lip and licked at it without thinking. The stiff short hair of his beard scratched her tongue and she spluttered, desperately trying to ignore the taste of his skin and forget the feel of his lips.

She grabbed the collar of her shirt and scrubbed at her mouth, holding her breath so that she wouldn’t have to think about his scent any more than she had to. Ugh, now the cell smelled like sweat. Kano sweat. Truly the most disgusting kind of sweat. She sighed. She was only being petty because there was nothing else for her to do. The ache in her jaw had faded, but she could feel that it was swollen and tender. There was probably a fantastic bruise, but she didn’t have a mirror in her cell — being able to see the damage she had done to him was all the more motivation to get out, although simply seeing his face as her reflection would likely sap whatever vindictive pleasure there was to be had in it. 

She turned her thoughts to more important concerns. Why hadn’t Jax come yet? It wasn’t like him to put off an initial interrogation. Granted, Kano wasn’t just any prisoner, but to leave him alone for so long wasn’t a good idea. If his cybernetic eye beam could — hey, she hadn’t tried that.

Sonya straightened, looking to the harmless blankness of the sidewall. If she could activate the eye beam, maybe it had enough kick to burn through the bars. Then she realized she had no idea how to operate it. Did you just think about it and _zap_ — lasers? It wasn’t controlled by a button or anything — she’d seen him use it without touching anywhere on the plating. She focused, concentrating on a slight divet in the wall.

On, she thought.

Nothing.

Zap?

Nada.

Blast. Ray. Boom. Burn.

Not so much as a mechanical whir. She had the sneaking suspicion that the eye wasn’t even lit up.

“Fuck.”

She put her head in her hands, palms grinding against organic and inorganic eyes alike, dragging the flesh down her face with an irritated sigh.

“Morning, princess. Looks like someone woke up on the ugly side of the cot.” The woman’s voice was familiar, mocking, with a barely restrained note of triumph. She looked up through the bars, mouth falling open at the sight of herself, arms folded and grinning down at her.

Her depth perception wasn’t working — it was like being in a dream or a vision. Her mouth looked weird, like it had been stretched too far, and there was a sinister glint in her eyes. She wasn’t in uniform. There was a deep purple bruising at her throat--consistent with the injuries that Sonya knew she had sustained last night in her own body, but if this was a parallel reality, that would make sense, wouldn't it?

“Sonya?” she asked hesitantly, gut clenching reflexively at the sound of her name in Kano’s voice. The woman’s smile widened.

“Kano,” she drawled with obvious satisfaction. “Enjoying your new accommodations?”

“Look—” She got to her feet, approaching the bars with her hands up. “You’re probably not going to believe me, but I’m not Kano. I’m you — or, maybe another version of you? I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m Special Forces Lieutenant Sonya Blade, and I’m trapped in this body. You can put me in cuffs or keep me in here if you don’t trust me — I don’t blame you, I’d be suspicious too — but please, I need to talk to Raiden and figure out how this happened.”

The other Sonya’s smile had melted away during her speech, and her jaw set mulishly. Sonya had the sinking feeling that this would be even harder than she’d expected.

“You must think I’m stupid,” the other woman said at last, voice low and soft. “You think that acting even more pathetic than usual and using a shitty accent will convince me to let you out?”

“No, I—”

“Shut the fuck up.” The other Sonya was smirking again, and there was a cruelty in the expression that made Sonya feel sick. “You’re done, Kano. We’ve got you right where we want you, and you’re not squirming free any time soon.”

“I’m not Kano,” Sonya growled, stepping close to the bars and grasping them so tightly that her knuckles whitened.

The other Sonya leaned in, eyes sly. “Nice bruise. Behave yourself now, or I might have to give you another.” 

Sonya forced herself not to yell, but there was a dangerous quavering in her voice. She pressed herself against the bars, as if she could convey her honesty through proximity. “Please. There’s some crazy shit going on -- if we don’t get a handle on it, who knows where it could lead?”

“Oh, so you want to work together, then?” The other version of her stepped even closer, breath buffeting Sonya’s face. Her pupils were exaggeratedly dilated — pools of black in thin rings of blue, and Sonya felt flushed, palms itching. They were so close that she could feel the other woman’s body heat.

“I’m, um, it makes sense, doesn’t it? If there’s…something bigger going on—” With mounting horror, she realized that her pants were significantly tighter than they’d been five minutes ago. “Oh god, no.”

The other woman frowned in confusion, pulling back a little and examining Sonya’s distressed expression — the flush that she could feel creeping across her cheeks, the way she hunched and held her hips back from the bars. Comprehension broke across her face, and then, instead of the horror and revulsion that the miserable Sonya had expected, the other woman threw back her head and laughed.

It was wrong — she couldn’t imagine even an alternate reality in which a version of her would react that way. The details that had she had dismissed as dimensional differentiation couldn’t be ignored or justified anymore. She didn’t want to accept it, didn’t want to give it voice because that would make it true, but if she didn’t face reality, she’d lose. She’d lose, and Kano would win, and she'd die before she let that happen.

“Kano.” She’d meant to ask or accuse, but her throat closed around the name, and it came out in something close to a whimper.

The smirk on the body that should have been hers and only hers widened, revealing teeth, and he pressed her face through the gap in the bars. “Yes, love?”

Her stomach flipped, and she was breathing too fast, a darkness pressing on the edge of her vision. She gripped the bars and knocked her—his forehead against his—hers hard enough to wipe the smirk from his face.

“Get the hell out of my body, you smug fuck,” she hissed through gritted teeth.

“’S my body now, bitch.” His madness was in her eyes, a hard brightness that didn’t belong. He smiled again, but without any humor. “I just might keep it. I’m starting to like it in here.”

“You—” She started to yell, but he reached through the bars, grabbed the back of her neck and pulled, slamming her cheekbones flush to the iron. It sent a fierce shock through her jaw and she gasped at the unexpected pain. Suddenly her airflow was cut off and there was a warm pressure against her lips and his—her tongue was sliding against hers—his—shit! She’d had no idea her lips were that soft, and she tasted like butter, and—no, wait. No. Fuck! This wasn’t just her body, this was _Kano_ in her body, and she in his, and, and he was kissing her, but it was like she was kissing him, and she tried to pull back, but his hold on her neck was too tight and she was in shock and it just kept going and—

She registered a jerk of movement before the impact. A blinding agony shot through her crotch, and her knees liquefied. She yelped and collapsed back into her cell, hands pressed tightly against her inner thighs. There was a horrible ache building, deepening in her pelvis, spreading up her gut and back, and in the throes of the pain, she thought for a minute that she’d lost all feeling everywhere else. Her breakfast churned in her stomach and she started to heave. She could barely hear Kano’s laughter, his awful snigger in her voice, but it filtered through the haze.

“Sorry, babe. Well, I’m not, actually, but I hate to do that to myself.”

She choked, tears burning at the corners of her eyes, and curled into fetal position.

“’S easier if you lay out on your back,” he advised, black humor softening his voice. “Just close your eyes and it’ll all be over soon.”

The pain was receding. Only slightly, but enough for her to form coherent thought.

“Fuck. You.” She didn’t care anymore — she gingerly massaged his crotch, edging carefully around his ballsack to soothe the agony. Holy shit, that _hurt_.

“Sorry, business before pleasure — I’ve got a job to do.” 

“What job? What are you doing here?” she grunted, rolling over onto her knees and glaring up at Kano, who’d folded his arms and jutted his hip in a manner that was no doubt intended to be provocative.

“Patience is a virtue,” he smirked. “You’ll be the first to know. I promise.”

“You’re not going to get away with this.” She got to her feet with difficulty, wincing at the lingering pain, but refusing to break her gaze as she glared through the bars at her rival.

“Oh I will, believe me.” He tested the bars with a finger, smiling broadly. “But you won’t. Get used to living in a cell, sweetheart. Mind the body, though—it’s a rental.”

“I’m going to get out of here, you piece of shit,” she said, resisting the urge to approach the bars again. “Then I’m going to beat it out of you. If you’re lucky, I’ll stop once you tell me.”

“Ooh, _scary_ threats from the one who’s locked up.” He sneered and spat. “I’ve got a ticket out of here, but don’t think I’m going quietly. Me an’ my knives’re gonna pay you some special attention, and you won’t be half so pretty when I’m done with you.”

“I’ll still be prettier than you.” She did her best to sound unconcerned, but if she hadn't managed to free herself by the time that he was ready to "visit" her, she'd be hard-pressed to survive the encounter. In such close quarters, his size would be a major disadvantage. If he had his knives, it could be a deadly one. 

He laughed. “Yeah, you’re downright fuckable. Be careful in the showers, though—I’ve been told I have a nice ass.”

“Yeah right. You have a terrible ass.” She'd never really looked, but it was the principle of the thing.

He shrugged. “Feel free to test the merchandise. I know I—”

“Don’t you dare!” she flushed, fists tight and helpless.

He smirked, eyes half-lidded, and hooked his neckline with a finger, pulling it down to expose cleavage. “Hygiene is very important. I couldn’t bear to neglect yours. Rest assured, I’ll be very thorough.”

She seethed, wishing she could activate his eye laser and melt that smirk from her face. “I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll never stop hunting--”

“And what have you been doing all these years?” He spread his arms and cocked an eyebrow. “Lulling me into a false sense of security? Because you’ve never sealed the deal, love. Never even come close. I’m three steps ahead of you, and I always will be.”

“You’re a greedy, arrogant, psychotic piece of shit, and I’m going to be there when your stupidity catches up with you,” she said, controlling her voice as best as she could. “I’ll put you in the ground and just walk away, and I’ll never look back because there won’t be anything worth remembering.”

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” He shouted, eyes popping and spit flying as he seized the bars with white-knuckled fingers. “Remember your partner? Your unit? I do! _Fondly._ You’ll never move on, you dumb cunt — I’ll be there. Every time you close your eyes! And I’ll be the one to close ‘em forever.”

She smiled thinly. “Good luck keeping your cover. I’d love to be there when you inevitably blow it.”

His chest was heaving and his face was flushed from the outburst. Sweating. He calmed himself with difficulty, glaring daggers at her all the while. When he seemed relatively composed, he smoothed his hair back and tightened his ponytail. 

“I’ll be seeing you soon, Sonya," he said at length. "I’d kiss you goodbye, but you’re honestly kind of a shitty kisser.”

She tapped the bruise on her jaw. “I got you pretty good last night, though. And I’ll see you sooner than you think. Watch your back, asshole.”

He sneered and opened his mouth as if to retort, but closed it, shaking his head. She watched him walk away, noting how stiff his spine was, how tense his shoulders were. He didn’t move like her. He didn’t speak like her. He wouldn’t stand up under scrutiny. She didn’t think he was very smart, but he was clever enough to know that he couldn’t pass as her for very long. His timetable couldn’t extend further than a week or two — it could even be shorter. 

An assassination? Surely there were easier methods. It had to be a similarly precise assignment, though. Was she chosen specifically, or had he taken her body out of spite? Both? Fuck. She couldn’t tell yet. The best way for her to stop him hadn’t changed — she needed to get someone else’s attention, spread the word, and she needed to get out of this cell. If Kano managed to keep her from talking to anyone who knew her well enough to believe her, she’d have to go it alone.

Maybe that was better. She’d have fewer restraints. If she broke out, she could deal with Kano on her turf, by her rules — or lack thereof. She’d get him when he wasn’t expecting it, and she’d force him to tell her everything. He wouldn’t be walking away, though.

Not this time.


	7. An Unexpected Dick and Other Disappointments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been awhile--I started my summer job and hit a wall. Thanks for sticking with me, and thanks for all your comments! As always, let me know if anything feels off or if there's something you want to see.

“You alright, ma’am?” The guard on duty saluted as Kano stalked past the observation booth. He nodded, forcing himself to smile. 

“Fine. I just hate talking to that bastard.”

“Yeah,” the other guy nodded vigorously, eyes flicking unsubtly down to Sonya’s breasts. “I, uh, I heard shouting. Sounded rough.”

It was all Kano could do to keep from laughing at the other man’s unconvincing display of sympathy, but he composed her features into an expression of grateful exhaustion, and he arched his back under the pretense of stretching. He groaned softly, peering under his lashes to watch the hormonal guard swallow. 

“Rough I can handle,” he sighed, and the kid slipped a hand under his desk. Classy. “It’s the crazy that gets under my skin.”

“Crazy?” The guard licked his lips, searching for the words that would keep his attractive superior from realizing just how out of his league she was. “Wh-how crazy?”

Kano treated him to an indignant scowl — he knew how sweet those looked on her — and folded his arms, conveniently pushing up her breasts. “He seems to think he can act polite and convince me that he’s some kind of alternate version of me! Can you believe that?”

The guard shook his head vigorously. No doubt he’d like to be doing other things vigorously right now, but Kano couldn’t leave him to it yet.

He sighed again and tucked a few loose strands of blonde hair back behind her small, well-formed ears. “I think he needs some time in isolation. No one should have to listen to his pathetic lies — let him stew for a couple days, and I’ll crack him like the fucked-up little nut that he is.”

“Definitely,” agreed the guard, scrabbling for his shift log. “I’ll make a note for the other shifts. No one talks to him without your say-so, ma’am!”

“Thank you, soldier,” cooed Kano, granting him a shy smile. “You just made my day.”

“Just doin’ my job, ma’am.” He was actually blushing. Embarrassing. Poor kid didn’t know the bitch was frigid. It’d be cruel to string him on.

“Well, look me up when you aren’t.” He winked. “I like talking to you.”

He didn’t bother waiting for a response — the kid was too shocked for anything coherent, anyway — but sauntered away, exiting the detention area with a wide grin on his borrowed face.

It was fun to fuck with her, and to disrupt the natural workings of her life. It wasn’t why he was here, though. He needed to find that stupid portal stone and obliterate it. Then he could wish himself back into his body, the sorcerers could teleport him away from all these Special Forces jackoffs, and Sonya Blade would be left holding the bag. He didn’t know how long he’d have to wait for the escape, though, but he wouldn’t want to spend that time in a cell. Being Sonya Blade had a lot of perks — not the least of which was freedom. Maybe he should hold off on switching back. The spell lasted four days, anyway, so it seemed likely that Tsung wouldn’t recall him before then, even if he had managed to finish the job. 

He bit his lip. Four days guaranteed inside her, four days with her behind bars. How to best utilize this opportunity?

He’d usually preferred more obvious forms of retribution — generally, killing people she felt responsible for, trying to kill her, or thwarting missions or projects into which she had invested time, effort, and resources. Preferably, all of the above would involve heavy ordinance and the colorful, skin-blistering, earth-shaking deployment of said ordinance, complete with bits of Special Forces property and personnel flying about. Having access to her identity opened up a whole host of less overt avenues — he could tank her personal finances, take intimate pictures or video and spread them on the internet, ruin friendships, destroy valuable personal property, etc. All options that would result in a lot of pain and aggravation, but it would all be so _remote_. What he liked best about physically fighting her — even if he…didn’t always win, exactly — was that it was irrefutably immediate. High stakes and instant gratification — the cause and effect was bare and brutal for all to see. 

If all went well, though, she’d be arrested and sentenced for the whole stone thing, so he would never have to worry about her coming after him again, but anything he did now would likely diminish in actual impact. If he was gonna really stick it to her, spit in her eye and rub salt in her metaphorical wounds, he’d need to do something she’d remember. Something that would embed itself so deeply in her pretty little head that it’d haunt her during her long, monotonous hours in solitary. Or just until they executed her, if treason was still a capital punishment in the States.

He hadn’t meant to kiss her, but that might be a step in the right direction. She had looked so mortified — a combination of fear, outrage, shock, and guilt that was intoxicating. It had been weird to hold the back of his own head and not feel the pressure at his scalp and neck, to feel the tautness of his own skin over the thick trapezius muscle, over the vulnerable upper vertebrae, and not register the heat of his own fingers. The kissing part hadn’t been so strange — lips, teeth, and tongues were fairly universal on Earthrealm, and he’d been long accustomed to the taste of his own mouth. Sonya’s lips were larger, her tongue more narrow, her teeth straighter, but it hadn’t made that much of a difference, and he’d never been picky about facial hair. It was the thought of her that had really made it — her confusion and helpless rage, her indignation at his occupancy of her body. He’d felt her respond a little towards the end, though — a twitch of the tongue, a brief tension of the lips — and the thought of her reciprocating whatever bizarre cocktail of disgust, anger, and obsession that had prompted him to move in was worrying. He’d always liked to think of himself as the predator in their rivalry — the one who tore at her weak points and tormented her from the shadows, occupying her thoughts and fears as a toxic spectre that refused to be dismissed. Sure, there was an undeniable hardness beneath her oh-so-principled exterior, a latent brutality that he’d come close to successfully coaxing into the light on several occasions, but he’d assumed that was damage that he’d been responsible for — not an intrinsic part of her. If it was in her to match his depravity even on a reflexive level, she was much more dangerous than he had ever reckoned. Despite his pragmatic dedication to self-preservation, he couldn’t help but be intrigued by the thought of a feral Sonya Blade, unchecked and advancing on him with his own bloodlust in her eyes.

He stopped, lazy smile vanishing from his face. He’d been walking aimlessly through the halls, and he didn’t have a fucking clue where his feet had taken him. He checked the ceiling for cameras — if there was a security feed being monitored, he didn’t want to look too suspicious by standing stock still and staring about like an idiot. No cameras. He could look as stupid as he liked, then. He was at the intersection of two corridors, hallways stretching out before and behind, and out to the sides. A few doors — none clearly labeled, unfortunately. Shit.

He decided to go forward. It wouldn’t hurt. The building couldn’t be that extensive, and he was bound to run into an identifying feature sooner or later. He passed the ones without signs or windows without hesitating, but he breathed lightly, straining to hear the slightest hint of conversation or activity that might give him a clue as to where he’d wandered. Nothing. What were they doing with all this space? Had he stumbled onto the paperwork wing?

He was losing patience, ready to backtrack and try another corridor, when he drew level with a door that had a window. Peering in as he passed, he could make out a wide expanse of cleared floor, the sheet-cake shape of a boxing ring, and a rack of freeweights. Lights off, no sounds — nobody home. He shoved the door open and crossed the training room floor. There was movement in his peripheral vision, and he spun, automatically dropping into a combat stance at the sight of — he laughed, forcing himself to relax. Just a reflection. 

He stood up straight and gave the Sonya in the glass a mocking wave. She waved back. He noted that her posture was a little too…loose? Something in the shoulders. She was always so damn uptight. He corrected it and smoothed his hair back. Control was imperative. He shouldn’t have let her get to him in the detention area — if that guard had been within distinguishable hearing range, he would have been truly buggered. 

He went to the far wall and sat down beside the weight rack. If anyone came in, he could just pretend to be resting from some heavy reps. He pulled out her phone. He could check the directory — he couldn’t remember if it had included the basement level, but that would make things a hell of a lot easier. She didn’t have many applications on her phone, and he suspected that the vaguely pleasant background image of a tropical beach with waving palms was the default that had come with the device. He tapped the camera icon and accessed her gallery, pulling up the hasty pictures he’d taken that morning. 

He grunted with approval when he saw that it had been a multi-level directory, and fiddled with the screen until he got the zoom function to enhance what seemed to be the lowermost floor. There was the detention block in the eastern corner — it looked like there was a lot of space devoted to utilities here, and he guessed that the silent rooms he’d passed had to be heating or some kind of electrical mainframe housing. There was the gym. Great. Now where was the teleporter? 

He scowled at the small screen, paging across the image. Tele—communications hub. Fuck. He didn’t see a teleporter room, or a portal room, or an interdimensional transport room or any other designation that would logically house the portal technology.

The phone buzzed in his hands and he almost threw it across the room in surprise.

“Bloody fuck,” he muttered, putting a hand to the softness of his chest to soothe his hammering heart. No wonder the bitch hated surprises so much — he’d bitten his tongue and the skin of his neck and chest felt flushed and clammy. 

He exited the photo app and selected the message icon — a conveniently intuitive stylization of an envelope. One new media message from contact “Insufferable”. He scanned the listing of other recent contacts quickly — Briggs showed up as “Jax”, a few names he didn’t recognize that were likely other colleagues of comparable rank, and a few unnamed numbers that could be anything from undercover operatives to obscure takeout places. He could investigate those more thoroughly later. For now, he’d start with “Insufferable”.

He opened the message, and spent a few moments blinking down at the low-res penis. It wasn’t particularly remarkable, but its unexpected nature necessitated some attention. He couldn’t imagine that the humorless Blade would get her rocks off via a shoddy photo. He didn’t know her very well and he didn’t care to, but it was important to at least have a sense of the dog that had you by the heel. He’d dug into her background a little when her bullheaded persistence first became clear, and the woman was born and bred for duty and discipline. She never seemed to have much of a personality until she was in the thick of things, and as far as he knew, she’d only ever lost control when he was involved. Cold and not prone to self-indulgence. Not the type to finger herself to the lackluster pixels of a disembodied dick.

Well, probably not. Now that he was thinking about it, though—

The phone jumped again, and a text message popped up below the dick.

_See something you like? ;)_

He snorted. Scrolling up through the previous messages wasn’t too helpful—heavy-handed attempts at flirtation on the part of the sender, quickly and summarily rebuffed by monosyllabic responses. Mostly ‘no’s. For the most part, she’d answered within the span of a few minutes, though. Weird that she hadn’t just blocked his number, or even changed hers. Maybe there was pressure on her to be civil? A superior officer? He couldn’t risk additional attention. It’d be best to play along, even if he’d prefer to either ignore the messages entirely or engage in a more provocative exchange.

_Not much to see_ , he typed, smirking, then closed the messaging application and selected her calendar, paging through the dates and skimming what few events she’d entered. She used a kind of shorthand that he couldn’t fully understand, but it looked as though she had two major meetings on a monthly basis—OIA mtg; SF mtg. SF was probably just Special Forces. She wasn’t the most inventive. OIA was probably a more specific cell. Higher or lower? It didn’t really matter. Her next meeting was in three days. He’d be out of her by then, and they’d have more than federal funding and PT to discuss by the time he’d finished with this place.

The phone buzzed again and he sighed irritably. “Insufferable” was an appropriate name for this guy. He decided to let the message sit for a while. He exited the calendar app and pulled up the photos of the building directory again, this time looking for promising locations. 

Just because there wasn’t a clear label designating the room with the teleportal device didn’t mean that it wasn’t there. Such a vital installation may require high security clearance to even know about, so of course they wouldn’t be advertising it. The best secrets were shielded with truth, though, so he doubted they’d have gone so far as to misrepresent the building’s physical layout — it’d need space, and lots of it. Shang Tsung had suggested that it would be here, but hadn’t had concrete information. If it was in a different building, he’d have to risk further exposure, but he was getting tired of skulking around. He doubted Sonya was as withdrawn from the body of the base’s populace as he’d been so far today, and he was always antsy when undercover.

He growled in frustration, swiping through the photos a third time, but no viable space presented itself. The cafeteria, maybe, but he’d been there already, and there was no way they’d be able to conceal the portal tech secretly in a room that got so much daily traffic. It had to be in another building.

“Fuck,” he sighed, knocking his head back against the wall.


	8. Friendship will Free You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sonya gets her audience with Jax. Can she convince him? And even if she can, will it already be too late?

The guard that brought her lunch—flaccid lunchmeat and browning lettuce on soggy bread—didn’t speak to her. He didn’t even look at her when she called after him. She left the tray on the floor and pushed her face as far between the bars as it would go, craning after the retreating soldier. 

“Hey,” she drawled. “No witty rapport?” 

He didn’t engage, and being ignored was more infuriating than being yelled at. She had planned to stay calm, stay agreeable, be pleasant for a better shot at being trusted enough to get the word out, but she was still adrenalized from her…encounter with Kano, and, dammit, this hadn’t exactly been a good day.

“Hey, fuckface!” she roared, slamming her palms against the bars. “Get your ass back here!” The volume of Kano’s voice in the cramped space was overwhelming—it felt as though he were tearing his way up and out of her throat to fill the cell and sprawl out into the hallway. It didn’t sound as nasal as it did when she’d heard it with her own ears. 

There was no response. 

“Shit!” She bent and grabbed the sandwich, throwing it at the hall. The bread struck the bars and fell apart, and the wad of processed meat sailed out, striking the floor with a wet slap. “I’m making a scene in here! Come assert your authority, kid!” 

“Settle down, asshole!” the guard’s half-hearted reprimand drifted lazily down the hallway. 

“I need to speak to Jax!” 

“You won’t be talking to anyone any time soon—” The guard’s voice had tightened irritably, and was quickly increasing in volume. She heard his steps approaching as he spoke. “—so you might as well shut the fuck up!” 

“I’ll start singing in a minute if you don’t get me what I want,” she snarled, glaring at the young man as he came into view. He still had acne, for Crissakes. They weren’t putting anyone more seasoned on guard for someone as dangerous as Kano? Jax must really be distracted with the review board. 

“Really?” The guard toed the fallen disks of meat with his boot. “What are you, a child? Eat your food and be grateful you’re getting any at all.” 

“Give me something edible, and I might eat it.” Sonya leaned into the bars casually, spreading her hands in a gesture of harmlessness. “Look, I don’t want to make trouble for you—this can be an easy shift—” 

“Right,” nodded the boy, eyes narrowing sarcastically. “I believe you whole-heartedly.”

“Kid,” growled Sonya, inclining her head. “Listen. If I don’t talk to Jax soon, bad things are going to happen. To keep bad things from happening, I need to talk to Jax. You are preventing me from talking to Jax, therefore you are making it more likely that bad things will happen. Do you follow?” 

“Sure do, Chicken Little.” The guard smirked and folded his arms. “You’ll talk to Jax when he wants to talk to you, and he’s busy.” 

“I’m fucking serious, here—” Sonya scanned his uniform, found his rank. “Corporal. I’m not trying to trick you into abandoning your post, and I’m not trying to communicate with a fucking Black Dragon agent, okay? You know Jax.” 

“Yeah, I do. And I know that he wouldn’t trust you as far as he—” the corporal shrugged and grinned, “Well, as far as _I_ could throw you.” 

Sonya shifted her weight, feeling that helpless frustration welling back up, making her palms itchy and her neck hot. “I know he’s busy with the review coming up, but—” 

The guard’s demeanor shifted abruptly, his arms dropping and his gray eyes widening in shock. He stepped in close to the bars, and Sonya was uncomfortably reminded of the weirdly charged kiss from earlier—the feel of her own lips and tongue, the heat rolling off of her body, the hostile light in eyes that she was used to seeing daily in her bathroom mirror. 

“How the fuck do you know about the review?” The corporal’s whisper was strained. 

Sonya considered his expression, then smiled and backed away from the bars, shrugging. She turned her back to his increasingly insistent questions, going so far as to lie down on her cot. If she couldn’t convince anyone with the truth or by being civil, she may as well resort to scare tactics. The twitchy corporal would have no choice but to push it up the ladder, and eventually she’d get her audience with Jax. She only hoped that it wouldn’t be too late. 

The corporal wasted a few more minutes trying to get her talking again, then cursed softly to himself and ran back to his booth, hopefully to radio Jax. Now it was just a matter of waiting. She knew it shouldn’t be a long wait, but in that cell, with the knowledge that Kano was out wreaking havoc in her body, each minute felt like an hour and each hour felt like a day. What was he up to? She tried to narrow down his plans, but couldn’t stop thinking about the pressure of her lips against his, the warm buzz of hatred that had passed between them in that brief instance of united flesh. The force in her familiar fingers as they gripped the back of her borrowed neck, the pain of the bars against his sharp cheekbones, and the surprising sweetness of her tongue in her—his mouth. Fuck. She shook her head. Disgusting. What was wrong with her? 

She’d hunted Kano for years. His jab about her failure to put an end to their rivalry had hurt more than she cared to admit, but she’d always made an effort to play by a certain set of rules. You had no right to claim a creed or an authoritative right if you didn’t abide by the regs inherent in the system, but the problem was that sacks of shit like Kano didn’t play by the rules. Time and time again, he’d weaseled free of encounters, broken out of custody, even escaped from prison. There was nothing she wanted more than to put him down in a permanent sense, but where would that leave her? If her honor was compromised, if her position was threatened, he’d have won anyway, and she couldn’t let that happen. So she’d always held back, never given her superiors reason to question her discipline, and she’d never questioned her own motives. 

What if there was a part of her that didn’t want it to end? If she were being truly honest with herself, she liked fighting Kano. Punishing him. Beating him into the ground with her own fists and feet, giving everything she had until she was a bloody, heaving, triumphant mess. Every time they squared off, she knew she had to push herself to victory no matter how much pain she had to take in the process, because while she could not kill, she was under no illusions that he would grant her mercy if he emerged the victor. She’d seen the promise of death in his dark eye, in the gleaming teeth of his knives. He would go out of his way to hurt her—had on several occasions—and it would be the height of stupidity to trust him to be anything more than the absolute worst. He was disgusting, and the sexual bent of many of his taunts had always been utterly abhorrent, the press of his sweaty body against hers in the heat of battle was a loathsome burden exciting only in its potential for gaining an advantage in close combat. The thought of her body giving him even a modicum of pleasure repulsed her, just as the thought that his could please her. But for some reason, the knowledge that she could make him want things that his rational mind was staunchly opposed to was bizarrely arousing. 

She licked her lips, wondering if he had planned the kiss or if it had been as spontaneous as it had felt. The ache in her balls had subsided, and she made a mental note to never let him hit her there again, and also to hit him there as hard and as often as possible once she got back into her own body and had put him back into his. But that relied on her getting out of here. 

She sighed and rolled over onto her back, staring up at the blank field of the ceiling. If she remembered correctly, Jax should just be finishing up a luncheon meeting with the review board. Hopefully the corporal would be able to get the word to her friend before he got caught up in further politics. Either way, it was just a matter of time. 

It turned out to only be about ten minutes. Her ears perked at the sound of familiar footfalls plodding down the hall, and she propped herself up on one elbow. 

Jax strode into view, glowering heavily. His face was lined with exhaustion, and he had folded his metal arms resolutely. 

She smiled up at him and stood, going to the bars eagerly. He had to— 

"You have three minutes to convince me," he said flatly. "I've got more on my plate to deal with than the desperate schemes of a two-bit thug." 

"Jax—it really is me," she said, trying to convey her sincerity in his rough voice. That argument was futile, though, and she had limited time. Okay, things that only she knew. "They told you I talked about the review board, right?" 

Jax shrugged. "Nothing anyone on this base doesn't know. You could have overheard it last night before Sonya pounded your ass into the ground." 

She grinned at the slight pride in his voice, and he looked taken aback by the expression. "Okay, that's fair. Today's Wednesday, right? They put strawberries out with the waffles yet?" 

His arms dropped to his sides, and his brow knit with doubt. "Yeah, actually." 

"I hope you didn't eat too many, bud," she teased. "What did those kids in first grade call you? 'Big Butt Briggs'?" 

His eyes were popped wide, and he leaned in, gripping the bars with his metal hands. "Holy shit, Sonya?" 

She sagged with relief. "Yes, oh my God, yes it's me." 

He sputtered, gesturing at the body before him. "But—what? How is...this-- " 

"I don't know," she said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "But at the moment I'm less concerned with how it happened than I am with how to undo it. Have you seen him? Me? Whatever?" 

"Uh," To her surprise, he blushed. "Yeah. At breakfast." 

"Breakfast?" She echoed incredulously. "And you didn't figure it out?" 

"Hey, it was just a quick conversation!" He raised his arms defensively. "Yeah, I thought something was off, but, you know, I chalked most of it up to how you usually get after fighting him. Sonya, I—" 

She sighed, relenting. "It's okay. I didn't think this kind of thing would be possible. I couldn't have expected anyone to figure it out without more time." 

Jax snapped his metal fingers, then beckoned at the guard to join them. "I guess I can start making it up to you by letting you out of this cage." 

She smiled up at him. "That'd be a good start." 

He pulled a face, waving vaguely at her grin. "Ugh, don't do that. It's creepy." 

The guard jogged up, frowning in confusion and looking back and forth between the other two. "Um, sir?" 

Jax squared to the shorter man. "Corporal, I'm going to need you to unlock the cell. There are powers beyond Earthrealm at work here, and this person is not the same man we locked in here last night." 

The corporal blanched. "Sir—are you sure? Lieutenant Blade—" 

"Soldier, that was an order," snapped Jax. The kid jumped and began fumbling with his keys immediately. Briggs' lips twitched in a flash of a smile that only Sonya caught. 

"Thank you, Corporal," Jax said when the kid had found the correct key and inserted it in the door lock. "The woman you spoke to earlier was not the Lieutenant—we have been infiltrated by a spy that is using her likeness to pass through our defenses." 

"Sir, yes sir," murmured the guard, eyeing Sonya suspiciously as she pushed open the door and stepped out into the hall. 

"You are not to tell anyone what you have learned," continued Jax. "If he knows his cover is blown, we may lose the chance to extract vital information. For the time being, I'd like you to remain at your post and act like nothing has changed." 

The kid looked sick, but he snapped a salute and jogged back down the hall to his desk. Sonya and Jax watched him go. 

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" She asked. "Keeping things quiet, I mean." 

Jax sighed unhappily. "It's not great, but I think it's our best shot. If we alert the base, Kano could panic and escape. What if he takes your body with him? Or he could stay and fight, and kill some of our people while he's wearing your face. Or maybe someone would get lucky and take him out, but they destroy your body in the process. Do you know what he's here to do?" 

She shook her head. "It's gotta be something quick, though. He doesn't have to patience to work a long con, and he's got to know I'd get out eventually." 

Jax thought. "I guess it's too much to hope that he'd be here to kill that goddamn budget committee." 

Sonya snorted. "If it was something in the vein of large-scale destruction, he wouldn't need to be inside, much less in disguise to get it done." 

"So what's special about this facility that he'd need you to get access to?" Jax asked aloud. 

They thought for a few moments, then got it at the same time. 

"The portal stone!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay the "Big Butt Jackson" thing is because apparently in the animated cartoon, it was revealed that Jax's dark past is that he was teased at school because he was fat when he was a kid. So it's kanon, folks.
> 
> Sorry it's been a billion years since I last updated. Life gets in the way, I guess. I'm in the last stretch of this now, though, so I should be able to wrap it up nice and neat. Or as nice and neat as possible where these krazy kids are koncerned. I was originally going to write it so that Jax didn't believe her and she had to break herself out, but...c'mon. Their friendship is too deep for that. I couldn't justify any tropey disastrous miscommunication that would make that route work, even if it would have made the rest easier.
> 
> Hope you're liking it! Let me know if you've got any critiques--I'm always looking to improve.


	9. Kano: 1, Portal Stone: 0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kano actually manages to do a couple things. Wink wink.

Kano could feel sweat trickle down his spine. The Texan sun was a blazing eye in the center of a mercilessly blue sky, and the heat was everywhere, suffocating. It lay over his head and shoulders like a thick fur mantle and rose up from the gravel under his borrowed boots like steam off the surface of a sulfur spring. At least Outworld had a fucking breeze. 

He nodded curtly to the randos he passed, jaw clenched. Being out in the open was bad. The more people saw him, the higher the likelihood that someone would pick up on the little quirks, the discrepancies. If someone raised the alarm here, he had no cover, no sheltered escape route. He'd be spotted and cornered again, and Blade's perky tits wouldn't save him from what SF did to their own that turned traitor. Part of him wanted to do an about face and head back to her apartment, and spend the rest of today going through her phone and getting intel. But that wasn't the part of the job. There were too many variables to risk his life here. He may have gained rank in the Black Dragon by going above and beyond what any given job had called for, but he had always listened to his gut, and right now his gut was telling him to end it. 

He glanced casually around the compound—just an officer surveying her territory. There were three low buildings arranged around the wide square. Probably inglorious barracks. Black Dragon bosses didn't slum it with lower members—evidently despite all their sanctimonious whinging, Sonya and Jax didn't either. There was a squat tower at the far side, prickling with antennae and satellite dishes. Communications hub. Fair candidate, but the hangar ahead was far more likely. He'd only been casing it for a few minutes on the walk, but there was significantly less traffic around a building that took up a disproportionate amount of space in the lot. The sorcerer had said something about the transport device needing an arseload of room, right? Well they'd have it in that thing. It looked like an aircraft hangar, but there were no runways in or around the compound. Maybe an R&D depot—with the kinds of bleeding edge high-tech toys you got when your bosses could tap into taxpayer money. Worth checking out, whether or not their experimental portal was actually there. 

He rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing at the slickness he found there. Sonya juice. Fuckin' nasty. The beading sweat on his upper lip tickled, and he licked it automatically, getting a shock at the fullness of her mouth and the saltiness of her sweat. Weird to think he'd been getting used to her body. He blew out his cheeks and wiped his hands down his sides, grudgingly enjoying the firm muscle sliding under his fingertips. She may be an uptight little cunt, but goddamn, whoever was fucking her had it good. He wondered how it would feel to fuck like this—lithe and light, feeling that distracting rack jogging as she—he surged. Was a cock up the vag that different than up the ass? He tapped a finger meditatively over the phone in his pocket. Whoever that 'Insufferable' contact was would probably be more than willing to help him out. Could be a place to lay low for a little bit if the sorcerer welched on his extraction. 

He smirked. An inglorious end to Sonya's career, that. Betraying her creed, her career, and her universe and shacking up with a bloke she hardly knew to get sweaty before the hammer came down. In all honesty it wouldn't be the worst way to go, but for the ice bitch lieutenant it'd be humiliating. 

"Ma'am!" A steely acknowledgment jolted him out of the revere. A young woman in uniform, three arrows on her lapel, saluted crisply. "Good fight last night, ma'am." 

"Uh, thanks," said Kano, nodding curtly in return. "Coulda done better, though." She was hot despite the military air, with a multitude of fine braids coiled and pinned up to her scalp. Dark brown eyes. Pert mouth that curved into a tight smile as he watched. 

"You know, some people say you train too much," she said. "But after watching you demolish that guy? I'd say every second is worth it."

He bristled instinctively. "Demolish? Look, it—" he swallowed the rage that had risen in his throat. "It wasn't that easy. I mean, he got a few hits in, didn't he?" He lifted his chin and pointed at the purple marks spanning Sonya's windpipe. "I mean, this one alone hurts like a bitch." 

She shrugged noncommittally. "Sure, I guess, but from where I was standing, you made yours count for more. Fast and accurate will always trump slow strength." 

"Done much fighting, have you?" He couldn't stop his lips from curling into a sneer. 

She arched an eyebrow. "You...requested me for this outfit specifically, ma'm. I'd assumed it was because you'd seen my file." 

Shit. He tried to cover his ass. "Of—of course I did, soldier. Ah, but that was a while back, wasn't it. I need to...see you bringing your best to the goddamn table." The Yank accent was sounding strained, but this greenhorn didn't know Kano from a random Black Dragon agent, apparently—would it even matter? Fuck it, he was her superior officer. He glared down Sonya's straight nose at her. "And honestly? You haven't been performing up to expectations." 

Anger and incredulity flashed across her face but were quickly subdued. She saluted again, hand stiffened bladelike above her brow. "Yes ma'am. I'll train harder, then, ma'am." 

It sounded like she was gritting her teeth, and Kano had to fight to hide a smirk. Stuck-up military brat didn't like being taken down a couple pegs. "I hope so," he said casually, walking forward and making sure to jog her non-too-gently with his shoulder as he passed. "I'd hate to have to submit your name for performance review." 

She inhaled sharply, but held her tongue, apart from another surly 'Yes ma'am'. He grinned outright, a bounce finding its way back into his step as he crunched away on the gravel. Even the heat didn't bother him as much. Such a pity, that pretty face meant for smiling frozen into a grimace. Once he had the portal stone, he could come back and give her a real smile, alright. One that stretched from cute little ear to cute little ear, but maybe he'd have some—oh fuck. He scowled, stride faltering. He'd forgotten his gear. He'd had those knives for years. 

Not that he was overly sentimental, mind you, but when you worked with knives, you had to know them like your own body, know their weight, their balance, how much pressure could be put on the blade at each point, how to keep its edge and get the grip on the handle just right. It was a lot of work every time, and he hated doing unnecessary work. Should he turn back? He doubted he could just waltz in and steal the stone without raising a few questions, much less destroy it. And if Tsung and that pasty fuck Quan Chi were monitoring him somehow, they might yank him out of Earthrealm as soon as he'd done their bidding. 

Reluctantly, he pressed forward again. Not worth risking failure. He could buy a hundred, hell, a thousand new knives with the gold he'd earned in Outworld, and once he'd tied up this job nice and neat, he'd have plenty of time to get used to a pair of 'em. Still, it burned his ass. 

He drew up aside the entry door, nodding at the guard posted beside it. 

"Afternoon," he said, rounding out the o's deliberately. 

The guy nodded, a flash of metal glinting from beneath his peaked cap, and Kano's heart leapt up in his throat. But the face plate was on the wrong side, and the cybernetic eye glowed a soft purple, and the guy had already looked past him and he was in, passing through the doorway out of the blazing heat and into the blessed coolness of the shade. He gazed around the surprisingly empty hangar, looking for the massive stockpile of tech that had to be here and trying to reorder his thoughts from that scare. She was nowhere near him, he reassured himself. The sanctimonious cunt was probably screaming his throat hoarse in that archaic cell. Or maybe she'd decided to make the best of a shit situation and gotten to know his softer side. Gotten to know it so well it got real hard. 

He became acutely aware of his heartbeat and the chill of cooled sweat on his arms and chest. He stole off behind some generic stock crates, knowing he was in no condition to be believed as her. He'd meant it as a joke, but imagining it was...less than funny. It was distracting. Disturbing. He'd never liked her, god no, never wanted anything from her other than to feel her pulse flutter and vanish under his hands, but back at the cell...and the thought of her trapped in his body, angry and desperate and useless to the point of irrationality, making increasingly ludicrous attempts to get the attention of somebody, anybody, until she gave up and decided to punish him by touching his body in a way she knew he'd never allow her to if they were in their right bodies. She'd sit back on that thin, threadbare cot, and undo his belt, and the slight clink of the metal would be loud in the stillness. Then she'd unbutton the pants, hiking them down his muscled thighs with that delicate little shimmy all girls seemed to do, and stare down at the unknown bulge of his crotch beneath the fabric of his briefs. 

He bit her lower lip, drawing it free slowly, dragging it agonizingly over his teeth. She'd stop there, aware that looking would cross a line in their dynamic. She'd never be able to unsee his dick, never take back the memory of touching it, of wrapping his fingers around it and falling into a rhythm that shouldn't be familiar to her, of the shock at how good it felt in shivers up her spine. She couldn't stop the slight whimpers when she got close, the pitched blackness when she closed his eye and threw her head up, choking on the wave of sweet static, spilling over herself sloppily like a teen pounding themselves over a skin mag. She'd remember the slickness, the smell, long after she was back in her body. Whenever she thought of him or fucked someone from that time on, she'd remember how good it was when she'd had her hand around his dick. She'd wonder what it would be like to be inside, if she hadn't already. What that tight pussy of hers would feel like from his perspective, what it would feel like to fuck him and for him to fuck her. 

He let out a shuddering breath, flushed and sweating. The buzz was back, the liquid heat pooling in his crotch. Fuck. Was it her body that was doing this to him? Or had it just been a while since he'd gotten any? It'd only been...what, a fortnight since the merc in the tavern? He hadn't been bad at all. Even made Kano consider keeping contact. But hell if he wasn't hornier now than he'd been in a long time. 

He put a hand to his throat to gauge his pulse. The humid pressure of her chest against his arm, taut with the restraint of the sports bra, made him lose count. Fuck it. He'd intended to anyway, and she'd probably done it already. Prolonging it would only make him sloppier and sloppier, so really, it was just what was best for the mission. He told himself that as he stripped off the plain shirt and started struggling with the bra. It's not that he wanted her—he could never want her. Just normal...bodily urges. The bra dragged up over his head, tugging his ponytail out of order, but he was beyond noticing, too preoccupied with the strange sensation of weight on his chest, skin hypersensitive to the air conditioning. He looked down at the massive tits of his archenemy and shuddered, a high yearning arching behind his ribcage. She had an obvious tanline from the ridiculous cropped combat jacket she was always wearing, and he traced the border between bronzed, sun-kissed skin and soft, milky flesh with a thin finger. Small brown areolas tightened, the nubs of her nipples straightening. He sighed, covering them with his hands and squeezing slightly. Weird. So weird to feel encompassed while his fingers carved furrows in the fatty tissue. A sharp ache ran through his left breast, but the pain faded quickly and left a growing hunger. He laughed breathlessly, and started jiggling and kneading with one hand, slipping the other inside his tight little pants, searching fingers passing over the hot mound of her vulva—he could feel short wiry pubic hair poking up through the fabric of her underwear. 

"H-nnh." He tried to work his fingers down into the incredible heat between her legs, but the angle just wasn't right. He grunted, frustrated, and spun so his naked back was pressed against the smooth metal of the stock crate, hissing at the delicious sensation of cold against her skin. He bent and shucked off her pants without ceremony, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of her underwear and pulling that down as well. He peered down with slight curiosity, drinking in the sight of her short golden curls thatching the prim hillock of her vulva and snorted. A perfect goody-two-shoes like her would have a fucking trim and tidy carpet. He slid down, sitting on the smooth concrete floor with a painful thud that made his tits bounce, and he spread those long, coltish legs of hers and plunged his fingers into her hot, wet cleft. 

Fuck. 

He rummaged aimlessly for a bit, exploring the slickness of her labia, the courses of folds and ridges, meandering down to the center until he found her opening, ringing the taut threshold cursorily, shivering at the intensifying need, and plunged his middle finger deep down into her heat. Ahh god, it was disorienting to an almost uncomfortable extreme, like he was closing some kind of cosmic circuit, but was still leagues away from an insane sense of pleasure that he could vaguely feel ahead. He tried pumping himself, but it didn't get him much closer. He withdrew and spread his hand out, pressing his fingertips down and making fast, tight circles with them, roaming slowly until he—his hips jerked and his knees came up reflexively. Holy shit. More. 

He intensified the circling, panting lightly. It felt like it was taking forever and his fingers were getting sore, but another thrill shot through him and he was reinvigorated. He squeezed a breast with his free hand while the other worked at a frenzied pace. Again. And again. There was a vulnerable intermittent keening coming from—from him. He laughed, wondering if it was something of Sonya's or of his, but he didn't really care. Not when his thoughts were scattered in the building haze at the back of his skull. It was coming in waves now, bending his spine beyond his control. Between each seize, he felt the heat strengthen, as if he were stoking a flame that were melting his guts. A tremulous sweetness, a sense of automatic release, a brief instance of mindless pressure above his eyes, and suddenly every muscle in his neck and abdomen tensed. His mouth flew open, jaw straining, and a hoarse coughing sound juddered out. A thrilling ran from his clit to the top of his skull and back, and 'good' didn't begin to cover it, didn't cover anything—'good' was just a word and words didn't have meaning now and his universe had narrowed and saturated into a throbbing pulse of black. 

It didn't last forever. It never did. He sat there, huffing, his wet fingers limp at his sides, legs weightless as his capacity for thought creeped back. Bloody hell. He'd had no idea. 

He sighed and knocked his head back against the storage bin. Now he could think. And in retrospect...it wasn't good. Maybe he'd gotten soft during his time in Outworld or maybe he'd been too distracted by the body-switching spell, but it was undeniable that whatever the cause, he'd been sloppy. He'd be lucky if he got out of this with just the loss of his knives. It'd been fucked from the start—the sorcerer's ambush had stranded him here with no allies and no intel, with just his skills and the spell to guide him. And normally he'd be the first to say that was enough, but in the middle of an unfamiliar Special Forces base and with the goal of recovering a vaguely described unknown experimental technology under heavy surveillance, he'd found himself on unstable ground. 

He sniffed his fingers meditatively, and licked Sonya's musty juices away while he thought. He needed to finish the job as quickly as possible. No time for stirring the pot, for sabotaging her personal life. If he did what he was supposed to do, she'd be left holding the flaming bag of shit, and reap enough consequences to put her behind bars. If he wanted to get personal with it, he could always arrange an extraction later. If Quan Chi and Shang Tsung could depose Shao fucking Khan, they sure as hell should be able to set up a special little cell for the frigid bitch. Get her loose and talking with all the time in the world. Her intel could revitalize the Black Dragon and put the Special Forces outfit to bed for good. That was the path he had to follow, the goal he needed to keep in mind. Petty shit like undermining her personal relationships wouldn't have a worthwhile payoff. 

Her alienation wouldn't be satisfying—what he needed, what he craved, was that defiant edge in her eyes, the enraged set of her lips, the tremble of force in her muscle he could feel when they matched strength. And he couldn't get that by snooping through her conversations with that limp-dicked "insufferable" or randos around the compound. He had to earn it. And that meant finishing the job.

He sighed and hiked her underwear and pants back on, then found her bra on the floor and pulled it over his head. He was close. Just had to seal the deal. He shrugged on the thin shirt, the cropped jacket, and ran a hand through his messy hair. Gotta find the portal. 

He stood to check out the rest of the hangar. It seemed that this vast section of the chamber was a kind of front, meant to disguise its true purpose. Cluttered with many other storage containers and disused equipment, but not quite enough. He could see a camera mounted over the door he'd entered from and in the far corner of the chamber. Whoops. Thankfully he'd been out of their view for his little wank session, so he probably hadn't raised any alarms yet. 

He started off in the direction of the far camera, striding with purpose. As he walked, he noted other discrepancies in the main hangar space that increased his suspicions. No dust, no debris or other signs of warehouse-typical desertion. Cameras solely at the entrance and that other corner—either you had a lot of important equipment in storage that necessitated full surveillance, or you didn't have any monitoring gear at all. The air was circulated. No thick swelter of dust. A slight chill that would be wasteful in such a giant space with retired equipment. Definitely had to be something here. 

He threaded his way through the boxes and crates, keeping his head up. It didn't matter if the camera saw him—Sonya would have no reason to hide from it. At least, not yet. 

He reached the end of the room and glanced casually around the back wall. Shoddy drywall stretched along the full length of this side. A false back? The door was neither guarded nor locked, and he pushed it open without ceremony. There was more resistance than he'd expected, and a grating squeal as it swung wide to reveal a mess of wiring snarling across smooth concrete flooring, coiling at the feet of a metal platform. The jagged arcs of a half-finished ring curved up from the sides of the platform, glowing at junctions with a soft blue light. 

Kano grunted in satisfaction. Bingo. Portal found—just gotta narrow down the location of the portal stone. He jogged in close to the device and examined the sides of the incomplete ring. There were lots of panels of varying size, but he had to think a central component like the goddamn portal stone, whatever made it so special, would be prominently featured. He noticed a thick bundle of cables snaking from both sides of the half-finished arc away into the darkness at the true back of the hangar, and he followed them.

They led behind a stack of processors that hummed quietly, and when he rounded the corner, he saw that they joined together below a glass-domed chamber. Suspended within the chamber was a porous, potato-shaped rock that seemed strangely out of focus. Easy peasy. He put a slim hand to the glass. It was cool, but not unusually so, and he couldn't detect vibrations from the smooth surface.

He grinned and pulled his hand back, curled it into a fist, and snapped out a quick punch, shattering the thin dome with a crash. The glass bit at his fingers, and when he checked his knuckles he could see a few red scratches, but nothing he couldn't deal with for the immediate future. He grabbed the floating rock, and laughed. The porous surface rasped against his palm, and had a satisfying weight.

"Right, so." He squeezed it experimentally, feeling some of the more brittle edges crumble under the slight pressure. "Sorry, mate."

He dropped the stone to his feet and crushed it under one boot, a childish glee spiking at the chalky way it gave. He checked the debris under his boot and stomped it a couple more times until the Special Forces' precious dimension-unlocking rock was reduced to a sloppy pile of powder. He laughed and kicked it around a bit, spreading the dust across the floor and getting it all over his boots and pants. The air had a stale, metallic taste. 

Game over, sniveling Earthrealm would-be do-gooders. Now they'd stay the fuck out of his business. He returned to the device and ripped a few cables out of their sockets for good measure before heading out the door and back through the hangar. Just a matter of time before his extraction, then. Shang Tsung would pull him out, hand him a bloody ginormous sack of gold, and he'd be on a new and lucrative career path as their go-to-guy. With any luck, they'd send him back to good old Earthrealm now and then to pick up arms shipments, check on the Black Dragon, and stick it to Sonya Blade in prison. 

He fixed her apartment location in his mind and started jogging away, keeping his pace controlled so it would seem more "brisk" than frenzied and suspicious. He moved out of the hangar and trotted across the gravel field back to the main building, rock flitting up against his bare calves, nodding curtly at the soldiers he passed. Kano had completed his main objective, but he wasn't out of the woods yet, not by far. He could sense a sort of tension gathering in the atmosphere as he drew closer to the central building and wondered if it was going to rain soon, or if there was some other explanation for the uneasiness that gathered between his shoulder blades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for bearing with me so far! Probably just a couple more chapters left, and expect more nsfw content very soon. Let me know if something just isn't working for you--I'm always open to critique!


End file.
